The Feminist Killjoy Handbook

The handbook is now out in the UK with Allen Unwin (https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/295665/sara-ahmed) and in the US with Seal Press (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/sara-ahmed/the-feminist-killjoy-handbook/9781541603752/?lens=seal-press).

The handbook has been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, German and Italian with Korean, Greek and Turkish translations forthcoming,

Table of Contents

1.    Introducing the Feminist Killjoy

2.   Surviving as a Feminist Killjoy

3.   The Feminist Killjoy as Cultural Critic

4.   The Feminist Killjoy as Philosopher

5.   The Feminist Killjoy as Poet

6.   The Feminist Killjoy as Activist

Killjoy Truths, Killjoy Maxims, Killjoy Commitments, and Killjoy Equations

Recommending Reading for Feminist Killjoys

Feminist Killjoy Reading Groups - Discussion Questions

A Complainer’s Handbook: A Guide to Building Less Hostile Institutions

What does complaint teach us?

I was inspired to research complaint after taking part in a series of enquiries into sexual harassment that had been prompted by a collective complaint lodged by students. I began working with the students in 2013, left my post and profession in 2016, started gathering oral and written testimonials in 2017 and published a research monograph Complaint! in 2021. During this time I have been immersed in complaint - the project, the experience, the politics. I wrote Complaint! from that immersion. Those I communicated with became my thinkers, feelers, theorists, as well as my collective. The details in their stories, vividly captured as description, became how I crafted the work, how I made sense of what was going on; I think especially of how the “long corridors, doors with locks on them, windows with blinds that come down” referred to in one testimony ended up as visual images in the book, appearing with different captions.

If I wrote Complaint! from immersion, I did not come up for air. I found a way of breathing in the material. As I am pulling together The Complainer’s Handbook, I am coming up for a different kind of air. I will no longer be working from such immersion in my data but widening the lens, reflecting on how the stories I have collected about making complaints within universities relate to other stories of complaint (and whistle-blowing) from people who have tried to make them in other institutions. I will also be reflecting back on what I have learnt over a near-decade of doing the work of complaint and on how the research itself became part of the story, showing for example how terms such as complaint collectives and complaint activism, which I think of as our terms, ways of understanding a collective experience, have come into wider use. I will also deal with how complaints can be used as tools against those of us who are trying to identify institutional problems - and how some complainers acquire a capacity to be heard because of their proximity to power as well as the consistency of their claims with those who have power (yes, I will be reflecting on Karen).

A Complainer’s Handbook is intended as a companion and follow up text to The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. Rather than being a set of instructions on how to complain, it will explore how making complaints (whether expressed formally or not) can gives us a set of instructions about the world and in particular about institutions and power. To complain about abuses of power is to learn about power.

To complain is to acquire the feminist knowledge and skills that are needed to build less hostile institutions.