Here at the Wheeler Center to hear @SaraNAhmed discuss her research on ‘complaint’. Crowd is buzzing with excitement! Will be live tweeting the juicy bits for the folks at home 
Absolutely packed to the rafters!
A very stirring (and funny) welcome to country from Carolyn Briggs: “On complaint... well I’m Indigenous so I have a few!”
Daniel Marshall up introducing Ahmed, talking about how the servers went into meltdown after the announcement of the public lecture, and welcoming all the feminist killjoys in the house
And Sara Ahmed as taken the stage: “My lecture today is on the process of complaint and the nature of abuses of power”
“Being able to make a complaint is used as evidence that you are not really oppressed by the situation”
Can think of a few things this could apply to...
Can think of a few things this could apply to...
“To make a complaint with an organisation can make you even more aware how little space you have... you may not think of yourself as a critic but that is where you might end up”
An interesting point: a focus on diversity in institutions is a ‘big shiny apple rotten at the core’... just because an org appoints someone to change it doesn’t mean that it’s actually willing to change (this rings very true)
“Making a complaint means becoming an institutional mechanic... you need to learn the procedure for how to make the complaint”
“A complaint is a bit like a flow chart... flow flow flow away... if a procedure exists it can be blocked at many points. What is required to proceed with a complaint is confidence and tenacity which are worn down by the procedure of complaint”
From the slide on the inaccessibility of complaint: “We knew the complaint procedure existed *somewhere* but we just couldn’t find it”
A close examination of warnings and discouragement and the way complaints are avoided by institutions, mainly through various kinds of coercion and inaction
The ”weird and magical” use of “saying yes” without any follow through. An official might nod and agree, allowing a complaint “to be expressed in order that it can be contained”
On when complaints are disqualified, or dragged out and buried by institutions:
“Exhaustion is not just the product of a complaints process but it is also often the point. I am often tempted to call this “strategic inefficiency”” (definitely borrowing this term)
“Exhaustion is not just the product of a complaints process but it is also often the point. I am often tempted to call this “strategic inefficiency”” (definitely borrowing this term)
To experience something as offensive is to be alienated from the joke, from others... such as when “laughter fills a room like water” (cw: misogyny)
From one of the participants: “... the drain, the exhaustion, the sense of why should I have to be the one who speaks out?”
You notice a structure when it stops you, when it prevents you from entering a space, sitting at a table or accessing resources. ‘Complaint’ marks you as an outsider... complaining amplifies your difference
Sometimes just opening your mouth can elicit eyerolls... complaint renders the *complainer* as the problem. Identifying harassment just leads to more harassment, discouraging the process from the beginning
A complaint is a kind of alarm system which marshals energy to protect the institution, colleagues, friends. It is addressed as a threat, an issue to be overcome rather than something which needs to be addressed
A complaint teaches us about how power maintains itself by making it difficult to challenge that power, through warnings and procedures
By making complaints we find one another, we change from being atomised to being a collective. Institutions can limit the damage of one person, one leak, but cannot contain a flood of information
Another gem from the Q&A portion of the lecture:
“For many there is no survival without complaint”
“For many there is no survival without complaint”
“#MeToo is of course a “they too” or a “you too” ... but there is not always kinship and connection because we are sometimes too worn down by the process”
When we exhaust the usual procedures, ‘the masters tools’, we can use instead whatever is at hand—we can resort to political vandalism. The containment of information must be resisted... and we can complain about the institution *outside of* the institution
And one last point before the lecture is over:
“Feminism means being inventive in the face of institutional failure”
“Feminism means being inventive in the face of institutional failure”
That’s all for tonight folks, thanks to Deakin’s Gender and Sexualities Studies Research Network for putting it on! I know some of you wished you could be here so I hope this helps. Love and power 💕
