The Art and Activism of Complaining

Becoming a feminist ear

Professor Sara Ahmed begins her teach-in with an introduction about the act of saying “no” as a labour of complaint and an expression of power within institutional settings. Sara’s own story with this began in 2013, when she began working with a group of students who had filed sexual harassment complaints at their university. These inquiries happened in silence and continued to be silenced and unacknowledged by the institution, allowing it to pretend as though they did not exist. Sara argues that this data of complaint is data about institutional life and about how and why institutions are resistant to change. Institutions hold power and resources, and when threatened by a “no”, they can mobilise this power against the complainers. Thus, complainers, also dubbed killjoys by Sara, and their “noes”, pose a problem precisely because they expose a problem. Eventually Sara resigned from her position, after her institution demanded that she remain silent, claiming her own “no” publicly and acting upon it by withdrawing her labour and writing about the complaints on her own blog. When she left, she invited people to keep coming to her with their complaints, becoming a feminist ear “to give complaints somewhere else to go” besides one’s own mind.

While Sara centres her talk around her own experience with the act of complaint, she reminds us that this experience is rooted in a broader history of feminist complainers, feminist killjoys, that she has inherited. She mentions specifically her aunt from Pakistan and Ama Ata Aidoo, author of “Our Sister Killjoy”, from Ghana, being sure to also note that the direction of this feminist travel, from Global South to Global North where she is based, is of significance. Hegemonic narratives will often claim that feminism travels from North to South, for the same racialised reasons that these narratives frame whiteness as superior, more “palatable”. This mirrors the institutional dynamics Sara is discussing, where institutions frame saying “no” as an unpalatable act, rather than a complaint that is deemed worthy of being heard.

The labour of complaint

Sara goes on to talk about the labour of complaint, which refers not only to the laborious process of filing a complaint, but also to how the act of complaining is embedded within socio-economic realities and labour conditions more broadly. The patterns that arose in the stories Sara heard are very much related to the notion of being “palatable” referenced in her introduction; women, queer people, trans people, working-class people, people of colour, are often stigmatised as troublemakers or killjoys when they complain. They are often advised not to file any complaint to begin with. One of the women who spoke to Sara expressed that even simply admitting the violence of harassment she was experiencing was as though she was taking herself down, becoming her own killjoy. Another woman speaks of how her visa renewal was jeopardised because of a complaint she had filed. A trans woman’s requests for a referral for gender-affirming care went unheard by the medical institution—over 133 times. This systemic silencing goes beyond workplace institutions: giving the example of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, Sara notes how multiple complaints had been filed about fire safety by residents of the building, largely working-class people of ethnic minorities, but nothing changed. So, when someone complains—someone in a precarious “unpalatable” position, someone who holds no structural power—the inaction, the “nothing” their complaint is met with, can in fact be everything with regards to how it affects their life: “the stigma then relates not only to the complaints, but the conditions that make them necessary”.

While the flow of a complaint process as outlined by institutions themselves is seemingly straightforward and linear, Sara notes that people’s experiences are more akin to a bundle of messy, intertwined lines. The first step of filing a complaint is clear (as per the institution’s own mechanisms), but the process thereafter is neither straightforward, nor linear.

Some complaints, however, are palatable for institutions, they move quickly and are heard. These are the complaints that come from those who are deemed worthy. In institutions, these are often the people who hold economic power over its status, whether it is a professor who is well-liked, or wealthy donors who can easily withdraw significant financial support from the institution. Sara argues that listening to these complaints allow institutions to protect themselves; “that some complaints go to the top of the pile is how other complaints are buried”. In the Q&A, Sara gives an example from the Free Palestine movement: systems globally are shutting down the collective refusal of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and they are largely doing so by mobilising anti-Semitism as a complaint mechanism.

Unburial of complaints

Sara elaborates on the metaphor of burial, describing the file cabinets that complaints are often lodged in as “complaint graveyards” and “institutional closets” holding information that institutions want to keep secret. Violence is often buried in these “closets”, whether literal cabinets or symbolic ones. For example, one of the ways that stories of colonial violence are kept away in British universities is through the promotion of “diversity”. This narrative forms a symbolic closet, and like any other, the histories and secrets found within it can be unburied. Sara shares the story of a person who was working on a diversity committee, but was dropped from the team when she brought up the question of race. The use of this word, the “wrong word”, unburied colonial histories, and this person, also inhabiting the “wrong body”, became a complainer to be silenced without even making a complaint.

Referring back to her own experience, Sara recalls when she was called “unprofessional” for exposing the sexual harassment complaints at her former university on her blog. This points to a normalisation of harassment, the shrugging off of something as status quo, assigning “culture” as the reason people should not complain and deeming it unprofessional when they do. Sara says that it is in this way that history can be buried without complaints, and how a complaint can unbury a history.

Sara continues by speaking to the importance of saying “no”, not only for the possibilities of unburial that it bears, but for the possibilities of connection and change. A “no” can cause a shift: it can be transmitted, making others feel that their own “no” is possible, or that there is someone to reach out to, and it can be how we find others. As such, saying “no” is not only about addressing the institution or using its formal mechanisms to complain. It can also be about addressing one another, by writing to each other or meeting in person. It can be about creating our own forms of complaint that cannot be put away in the institutional closet: through song, or reading out letters, or writing our grievances on walls, or posting and sharing online, or shouting and protesting.

Creativity of complaint

Sara concludes her talk by elaborating on the creativity of complaint—when “the violence of which we should speak, stops us from speaking”, being creative in our complaints helps us challenge this silencing. She suggests that to complain creatively is to do so collectively, repeatedly, and to be attune not just to loud “noes” but also to the quieter ones. We must take up as much time and space as we can, and haunt institutions with repeated complaints. Complaints may be buried, but in repetition there lies possibility: possibility of complaints piling up and spilling out of the metaphorical closet, of one complaint dislodging and revealing another, of the haunting turning into hope. Sara invokes the image of the messy, entangled lines again, imagining it this time as a map for these possibilities. In this map she imagines that each line could represent a conversation, an opening, time, a path, an encounter, a trace, or a promise for those who come after.

In the Q&A, Sara elaborates on the idea of collectivity, noting that it is also part of hope. In putting our complaints out into the world, together, we are giving them political futures and leaving trails for others to pick up on, strengthening the possibilities of collective resistance. This challenges the isolation that institutions force on us by individualising complaint mechanisms: gathering in numbers and fighting for each other is a refusal of keeping us apart. Finally, collectivity is also important in how it can counter institutional fatalism (the idea that there is no point in complaining because an institution cannot change)—complaints can and have succeeded in changing conditions, and just as we have inherited these “noes”, others will inherit ours.

Summary by: Talah Hassan