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Complaint!

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About this listen

In Complaint!, Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens.

To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors—to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive—Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives.

This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.

©2021 Duke University Press (P)2022 Tantor Education Gender Studies Higher & Continuing Education Social Sciences
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excellent pace, good expression when required. much better as an audio book than reading it, as some of the content is repetitive.so it was much easier to absorb as an audio book

Good pace of narration

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beautiful and terrifying. An awfully accurate description on engaging with power. I'm going to by a hard copy for reference

fantastic

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Social theory and trauma in the academy, unpicked with rigorous intersectional and Black Feminist theories.
Great writing, great performance

Sara Ahmed is back with another banger

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I struggled for 10 hours finish this infield. It was too much repetition and whining that drowned real institution dysfunctionality.  Up to the point that they reached, it did not mention anything about resilience or solutions or resistance to change systems such as institutions. In many ways, the middle of the book complained, seems to be a transition, complaint, more rubber band, and adult operation. Lastly, I would say that’s psychological support for harassment is more of a solution rather than political correctness. Making punishment a solution instead of clear consequences, misses the point of taking responsibility for one’s actions and inactions.

Too tedious to finish despite some valid points

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