Feminist Killjoy

'Remarkable . . . this book is the hope that so many people are searching for' Zimmer MagazineTo complain is an intimate, dangerous act. Whether it's speaking up about racism in the workplace or taking a stand against sexual harassment at university, the act of complaining to an institution can leave you isolated and undermined, all while the original injustice remains unresolved. Time and time again, we see these unanswered complaints compound to disastrous effect.In No is Not a Lonely Utterance, Sara Ahmed dissects the anatomy of a complaint, revealing how institutions create hostile environments that stigmatize complainers, and charts a way we can listen to grievances with 'feminist ears': going beyond mere validation and seeking instead to address the root causes of injustice and inequality.Weaving together testimonies from various walks of life, Ahmed shows us what we learn about the ways institutions exercise their power when complaints are raised, and indeed what we learn about our capacity to collectivize and create social bonds through complaint. In doing so, she inspires us to create better environments for our life's work.

The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including Mrs. Dalloway, The Well of Loneliness, Bend It Like Beckham, and Children of Men, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy.

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique-often by naming and calling attention to problems-and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions-such as forming support systems-to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the "orientation" aspect of "sexual orientation" and the "orient" in "orientalism," Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being "orientated" means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached. A queer phenomenology, Ahmed contends, reveals how social relations are arranged spatially, how queerness disrupts and reorders these relations by not following the accepted paths, and how a politics of disorientation puts other objects within reach, those that might, at first glance, seem awry.Ahmed proposes that a queer phenomenology might investigate not only how the concept of orientation is informed by phenomenology but also the orientation of phenomenology itself. Thus she reflects on the significance of the objects that appear-and those that do not-as signs of orientation in classic phenomenological texts such as Husserl's Ideas. In developing a queer model of orientations, she combines readings of phenomenological texts-by Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Fanon-with insights drawn from queer studies, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. Queer Phenomenology points queer theory in bold new directions.

Sara Ahmed betreibt den lesenswerten provokativen Blog ¿feministkilljoys¿. Bereits vor vielen Jahren hat sie eine Figur entwickelt, die sie ¿Feministische Spaßverderberin¿ nennt. Diese Rolle ermöglicht es Feministinnen, kreative Lösungen für den Alltag zu finden und ein System gegenseitiger Hilfe und Unterstützung zu schaffen. Ihr sehr poetisches und persönliches Manifest ¿Feministisch leben!¿ ist bereits das achte Buch der britischen Autorin, Wissenschaftlerin und feministischen Aktivistin, das erste jedoch, das nun auf Deutsch erscheint. Praktisches Handwerkszeug, mit dem innovative feministische Theorie im (Alltags-)Leben einer Feministin umgesetzt und erweitert werden kann, bietet auch das beigefügte ¿Survival Kit für Spaßverderberinnen¿.

'Not only a dazzling analysis of the workings of sexism, but a balm for the soul. It will teach you how to survive and how to transform the world' Hannah Dawson<BR><BR>We have to keep saying it because they keep doing it.<BR><BR>Do colleagues roll their eyes in a meeting when you use words like sexism or racism? Do you refuse to laugh at jokes that aren't funny? Have you been called divisive for pointing out a division? Then you are a feminist killjoy, and this handbook is for you.<BR><BR>The term killjoy has been used to dismiss feminism by claiming that it causes misery. But by naming ourselves feminist killjoys, we recover a feminist history, turning it into a source of strength as well as an inspiration.<BR><BR>Drawing on her own stories and those of others, especially Black and brown feminists and queer thinkers, Sara Ahmed combines depth of thought with honesty and intimacy. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook unpicks the lies our culture tells us and provides a form of solidarity and companionship that can be returned to over a lifetime.

In "Eigenwillige Subjekte" analysiert die feministische Kulturwissenschaftlerin Sara Ahmed das Motiv der ¿Eigenwilligkeit¿ und arbeitet dessen Ambivalenz von Dissens, Anklage und Widerständigkeit, Fremdzuschreibung und Emanzipation heraus.Ahmed untersucht die Beziehung zwischen dem Willen und der Eigenwilligkeit, zwischen ¿schlechtem¿ und ¿gutem¿ Willen sowie zwischen dem Willen der Einzelnen und dem Gemeinwillen, indem sie tief in philosophische und literarische Texte eintaucht und diese untersucht. Ihre Überlegungen geben Aufschluss darüber, inwiefern der Wille in eine politische und kulturelle Landschaft eingebettet ist, wie er verkörpert wird und wie Wille und Eigenwilligkeit gesellschaftlich vermittelt werden. Mit ihrem Fokus auf Eigensinnige, Umherirrende und Abweichler*innen weist Ahmed auf das widerständige Potenzial hin, das der Eigenwilligkeit inhärent ist.Gestützt auf Ansätze feministischer, queerer und antirassistischer Politiken bestärkt sie in ihrer einzigartigen Analyse des eigenwilligen Subjekts die Figur, die auf falsche Weise ihren gesellschaftlichen Platz fordert oder einfach nur zu viel will, darin, dass Eigenwilligkeit erforderlich ist, um Dissens zu artikulieren und widerständig handeln zu können. In diesem Sinne ist die ¿feministische Spaßverderber*in¿ eine enge Verwandte des ¿eigenwilligen Subjekts¿.

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.

"Das Glücksversprechen" ist eine philosophische feministische Auseinandersetzung mit dem allgegenwärtigen Imperativ, glücklich sein zu müssen. Das Werk fragt in provokativer Weise danach, was eigentlich passiert, wenn wir unsere Sehnsüchte und sogar unser eigenes Glück bzw. Glücklichsein von dem anderer abhängig machen. Indem sie Philosophie und feministische Kulturstudien kombiniert, entlarvt Sara Ahmed die gefühlsbedingte und moralische Arbeit, die durch die 'Pflicht zum Glücklichsein' ausgeführt wird. Sie kritisiert, dass das Glücksversprechen uns in Richtung konformer Lebensentscheidungen drängt und von alternativen Entscheidungen abhält. Glück wird denen versprochen, die gewillt sind, ihr Leben auf konforme Weise zu leben. Ahmed bezieht sich in ihrer Kritik auf die Geistesgeschichte des Glück/lichseins, von den klassischen Schilderungen der Ethik als gutes Leben, über Schriften zum Thema Empfindungen und Leidenschaften aus dem 17. Jahrhundert, Debatten über Tugend und Erziehung des 18. Jahrhunderts bis hin zum Utilitarismus des 19. Jahrhunderts.Sie beschäftigt sich mit feministischen, antirassistischen und queeren Kritiken, die gezeigt haben, dass Glück/lichsein genutzt wird, um soziale Unterdrückung zu rechtfertigen, und dass jenen, die gegen Unterdrückung einstehen, mit Unglück/lichsein gedroht wird: der feministischen Spaßverderber*in, der unglücklichen Queeren, der wütenden Schwarzen und der melancholischen Migrant*in.