Sara Ahmed: On Complaint

[Music] this is the first time I'll be presenting some of this material which is drawn from my research project on complaint and I want you to know that some of this material is going to involve descriptions of sexual harassment assault racism and bullying the lecture is dedicated to those of you who whether free formal complaint or some other means have identified and challenged abuses of power it is because of the work that you do that we have a chance of getting through so the title is simple it's the work that I'm doing on complaint so my lecture today is an attempt to think through the experience of complaint to think about that experience and to think with those who make complaints I'll be drawing on interviews I've conducted with staff and students who have made complaints within universities that relate to unfair unjust or unequal working conditions or to abuse as a power such as harassment and bullying I want to give room to complaint to listen to complaint in order to counter a history that has become routine in which those who complain are dismissed rendered incredible unable unable even to bear witness to their own experiences one postgraduate student I spoke to who made a complaint about Disability Discrimination was told in a letter that she had and this is a direct quote from the letter misinterpreted her own interpretation the mere fact of making a complaint can be used to cast doubt upon the person who complains and early career lecturer who made a complaint about how the university mishandled her sick leave was told that her ability to complain was evidence that she was not unwell if I was well enough to stamp my fault and complain then I was well enough to work stamp my foot and complain because she could hear how she was being heard we too have the opportunity to hear something our complaint is audible as a tantrum how the complainer is cast as spoiled how a grievance is heard as a grudge being able to complain about an oppressive situation is used as evidence that you are not rarely oppressed by that situation to complain within an organization so often brings you up against it so this early career lecturer realized through making the complaint that I wasn't just a person who was off sick I was a person who had a grievance against the way I had been treated at the University and in making that complaint she has to teach herself about how the university works to show the university how it had failed its own procedures and policies in relation to equality and dignity at work as well as the management of attendance she describes what it was like to do that work it was like a little bird scratching away at something and it wasn't really having any effect it was just really small small small and behind closed doors I think people maybe feel that because of the nature of the complaint and you're off work so they just have to be polite and not talk about it and so much of their politeness is because they don't want to say anything and maybe it is to do a being institution and the way they are built long corridors doors have locks on them windows or blinds that come down it seems to sort of imbue every part of it with a cloistered feeling there is no air it feels suffocating it was like note this it a complaint as something you are doing can acquire an exterior T becoming a thing in the world scratching away a little bird or your energy going into an activity that matters so much to what you can do and who you can be but barely seems to leave any trace the more you try the smaller you become it becomes smaller small small small a complaint has made confidential as soon as it is lodged so all of this happens behind closed doors a complaint as a secret as a source of shame as what keeps you apart from others what has not talked about private yours as you you two and note the physicality of the description a complaint becomes a magnifying glass so much appears so many details are picked up by an attention the intensity of an experience can be illuminating the geography of a place the building the long corridors are locked doors the windows with blinds that can come down less light less room you cannot breathe cloistered suffocating to make a complaint within an organization can mean you become even more aware of just how little room you have so in this lecture I will approach complaint as a form of diversity work as a work you have to do in order to be accommodated sometimes the work you have to do to be accommodated can make it even harder to be accommodated so in making a complaint within an institution you might not begin by thinking of yourself as a critic of the institution or as part of a wider effort to modify let alone dismantle it structures but that is where many who make complaints end up a complaint about what is going on within a university thus provides us with an alternative catalog of the university so I was inspired to do this project after taking part myself in a series of inquiries into sexual harassment and sexual misconduct prompted by a collective complaint lodged by students I learned so much from the work that they did to keep a complaint going since then I've interviewed 34 people who've been involved in some way in a formal complaint process at a university including students administrators early career academics in academics and retired academics so most of my interviewees got in touch with me through my website and I'll return to this aspect on my data collection in my conclusion and most of these interviews have been based where I'm based in the UK although I finished collecting the data at least for this project living a feminist life is data collection I'm not yet ready to draw firm conclusions and perhaps I won't ever be ready what I hope to convey is live it is happening now all around us there are explosions acts of speaking out and speaking back me too it's about giving complaints somewhere to go so my lecture is thinking where those I spoke to the complainers are my guides they are my feminist philosophers my critical theorists also my collective because this material is confidential many of those I have spoken to would fear the consequences for their lives and careers if they were recognizable from the data I'll be sharing only fragments from each story a complaint can be shattering like a broken jug we can be left in pieces I'll be picking up some of those pieces today not in order to create the illusion of some unbroken thing but so that we can learn from the sharpness of each piece how they fit together so the first section is called institutional mechanics so I think of complaint as diversity work by diversity work we might be thinking about the work of trying to open up institutions to populations that had hitherto been excluded I first word about diversity work and I'm being included drawing on interviews with equal opportunity and diversity practitioners based in Australian and British universities most practitioners are appointed by organisations to transform them but being appointed by an institution to transform at does not mean that the institution is willing to be transformed so how diversity is used by organizations can even become a sign of the difficulty of getting through so one practitioner described diversity as a big shiny apple with a rotten core it all looks wonderful right but the inequalities aren't being addressed this practitioner described her work thus it's a banging your head against a brick wall job so here a job description becomes a wall description and if you bang away at that wall and the wall kicks its place you end up with a sore head and what happens to the wall or you seem to have done is scratched the surface and this is what diversity work often feels like scratching the surface scratching at the surface and we can think back to the image of the complaint as a little bird scratching away at something without really having an effect it is because it is hard to get through that diversity work can be thought of as mechanical you have to work out how you are blocked you have to work out how the system is working to stop you making a complaint also requires becoming an institutional mechanic you have to work out how to get a complaint through a system it is because of the difficulty of getting through that the complaint often ends up being about the system now this point might seem counterintuitive given that organizations do have complaints procedures surely to make a complaint is to follow the procedure for making that complaint in fact listening to those who have made or who tried to make formal complaints has taught me that the gap between what is supposed to happen and what does happen is densely populated so complaint is a kind of mind the gap many universities in the UK include as part of their complaint policies a discussion of how they will record and monitor plants so one University writes that complaints will assist in identifying problems and trends across the university and a typical way that complaints are described is as data the data that's supposed to tell you what's wrong what's going wrong they then write the complaints will form the basis of positive publicity in demonstrating their identified issues have been resolved so when a complaint records a problem a complaint can be quickly folded into a solution a solution a record of how universities have resolved something so resolution dissolution which sort of means that complaints can be used rather like diversity as a way of appearing to address a problem a complaint procedure is often represented as a flowchart especially for student complaints flow flow away we go with paths and arrows that give the would-be complainant a route through so I spoke to one administrator about her work in supporting students through a complaint process so your first stage would require the complainant to try and resolve it informally which is really difficult in some situations and which is where it might get stuck in a department and so it takes away tenacious complaining students say no I am being blocked if something bad has happened and you're not feeling that way inclined you can understand why student would not have the tenacity to make sure that happens and to advocate for themselves so you can imagine that something on paper that looks very linear is actually very circular a lot of the time and I think that's the problem students get discouraged and get demoralized and feel hard done by and nothing's getting resolved and then they are in a murky place and they can't get out so if a procedure exists in order to clear a path that path can be blocked at any point and a complaint is not simply an outcome of a No a complaint requires you keep saying no along the way so this practitioner acknowledges that what is required to proceed with a complaint in her terms confidence and tenacity might be what is eroded by the very experiences that led to complaint something bad has happened not feeling that way inclined so unsurprisingly then stopping is part of the life course of many complaints a problem identified in a number of my interviews is the relative inaccessibility of complaint procedures one student described it took us forever to try and find the complaints procedure PDF on the database when you had existed but it was like a mythical golden egg we just couldn't find it and then when we did it was so big that even two PhD students spent weeks trying to get through the small print to find out what the complaint process was so if you can't find the policy you cannot follow the path laid out as procedure or if you do find it but it is hard to use you might not make it to the next step so a would-be complainer is one who has taken some steps in the direction of a formal complaint perhaps by making an informal disclosure to a line manager a supervisor or peer and many complaints are stopped at this point through the use of warnings a warning is an ominous sign a sign of the danger to come a warnings are useful because they articulate a no don't go that way predicated not on some abstract rule but on the complainers own health and safety think of how the sign on the left is more effective as well as effective instruction you would topple over one student describes I was repeatedly told that rocking the boat or making waves would affect my career in the future that I would ruin the department for everyone else I was taught if I did put in a complaint I would never be able to work in the university and it is likely I wouldn't get a job elsewhere so complaining here is framed as self damage as well as damage to others ruining a department no less and this student describes how the pressure not to complain was exerted in just one day subjected to eight hours of grueling meetings and questioning almost designed to break me and stop me from taking the complaint any further you can stop people from doing something by making it harder for them to do something a warning can operate not simply as a predictive utterance but also as a threat this GMAT student commented on how they had Department made reference in the meeting to her source of funding to be reminded of how she's dependent upon the department for resources is to be told how the department can make her topple over a warning as a threat now not all warnings operate as threats in quite this way warnings are often spoken in the language of care and concern another student describes I ended up going back to the chair and saying look this is harassment and I'm going to file a complaint and his response was essentially well we are just thinking about your career how this will affect you in the future the implication is that to proceed of a formal complaint is not to think about your career being advised not to complain is offered as career advice and your career is almost a vote as a companion who needs to be looked after so maybe your career is a plant that needs watering so that it does not wither away so if your career would wither as a consequence of complaining then a complaint is figured in advance as carelessness as negligence as not looking after yourself properly if warnings are used to discourage a certain course of action they can also function as positive directives you might be encouraged not to make a complaint indeed one academic described this approach as the default setting the default academia thing the university thing it will be fine if we do wait don't make a fuss so not making a complaint becomes a form of virtue and even good citizenships patience is tied to a positive outlook is it the best way to approach a wrong is to assume that it will write itself in time the flipside of a warning is thus a promise an institutional version of what I called the promise of happiness I promise that if you don't complain you will go further complaints can also be stopped by the very appearance of being heard one student talked to her head of department she says he seemed to take it on board he was listening he was nodding ten days later I still have not heard anything a space of limbo opened up if a nod is followed by inaction inaction is an action a nod can operate in the realm of the non performative in my earlier work I introduced a category of the non performative to refer primarily to speech acts that do not bring into effect what they named or even which names something in order not to bring it into effect and my example was a university that eventually agreed to a diversity policy but the policy doesn't come into use so agreeing to something is a way of stopping it from happening if a nod can be a non performative a body too can be in on the act that is a body can appear to act without doing anything or in order not to do anything so an academic brings a complaint to her line manager I would say he's a yes-man so whenever I talk to him he would say yes but I knew the yes was definitely not a yes it was a we'll see so perhaps a yes can be fed because or even when there is nothing behind it she describes this yes saying as a management technique this weird almost magical thing that happens when he speak to people in management when you go in there and it kind of ready for it and you're really fired up and you kind of put your complaint your case your story to the person and then you sort of leave as if a spell has been cast leave feeling like okay something might happen and then that kind of wears off a few hours later anything oh my gosh it's like a sleight of hands almost like a trick you feel tricked so yeah yes and not can stop a complaint from progressing by diffusing the energy of the one who complaints another academic describes what follow when students made a complaint about the behavior of professors at research events they set up a meeting they said they would have an open meeting but it was just about calming the students down so I think this is venting and that can be used as a technique of preventing something more explosive from happening you let a complaint be expressed in order that it can be contained so once the students have vented their frustrations once they have got the complaint out of their system the complaint is out of the system I think of this mechanism is rather like a pressure relief valve which lets off just enough pressure so that it does not build up and cause an explosion I'll return to explosions later so another method of stopping a complaint is to declare that a complaint is not a complaint because it does not fulfill the technical requirements for being a complaint this is very common actually so for example a member of staff made a complaint about bullying from her head of department that experience of bullying had been devastating and she suffered from depression as a result so it took her a long time to get to the point where she could write a complaint sometimes the experiences that we need to complain about other experiences that make it difficult to come so she describes what happens when she was able to put her complaint in I basically did it when I was able to because I was just really unwell for a significant period of time and I put in that complaint in the response that I got was from the Deputy VC he said that he couldn't process my complaint because they had taken too long to lodge ups so some experiences are so devastating that it takes time to process them and the length of time taken can then be used to disqualify a complaint so the tightening of the complaint as genre a complaint as the requirement to fill it in a form in a certain way at a certain time is how many struggles are not recorded if organizations can disqualify complaints because they take too long to make they can also take too long to respond to complaints one student describes how her university took seven months to respond to a complaint it was supposed to take three and then another seven months to respond to her response to their response to her complaint she has a theory it is my theory they've been putting in a long finger and pulling this out dragging this out over unacceptable periods of time to try and tire me out so they'll just give up sometimes it can seem that exhaustion is not just the effect but the very point of a complaint process exhaustion can be a management technique you tire people out there too tired to address what makes them too tired I've also been tempted to call this phenomena strategic inefficiency we might think of inefficiency as annoying but indiscriminate affecting everyone and everything listening to those who've complained has taught me that in efficiency can be discriminatory an international student was waiting for her complaint to be processed whilst her visa was running out ten days before my visa was about to run out I pie for a new visa and they were like how can we give her a visa she's on probation you have to have good standing to get a visa and they were like this complaint thing is open for students and staff who are more precarious because of their residential or financial status the longer a complaint is kept open the more you have to lose I would speculate that there is a connection between the discriminatory effects of inefficiency and the efficiency with which organizations reproduce themselves as being for certain kinds of people those whose papers are in the right place those who are in the right place those who are upright able well resourced well-connected those who had the least need to complain are them those who could most handle the consequences of complaint well you can lodge a complaint and still nothing happens perhaps the complaints end up in a filing cabinet filing as filing away one student said of her complaint it gets shoved in the box another student described I feel like my complaint has gone into the complaint graveyard when a complaint is filed away or Bend or buried those who complain can end up feeling that they too are filed away or bend or buried we need to remember here that a complaint is a record of what happens to a person complaints are personal they are also records of what happens in an institution complaints are institutional the personal is institutional one academic researchers shared her complaint file with me one of the things I talked about in those documents I am very open I was under such stress and trauma that my period stopped that's the intimacy of some of the things that go into it bodily functions like this a body can stop functioning a body can announce a complaint that body is in a document and that document is in a file and that file is in a cabinet to file a complaint can mean to become alienated from your own history a history that is often alienating already a history that is difficult painful and dramatic this second section is called in the thick events oh so I focused a fire and what happens to a complaint on the mechanisms by which complaints are stopped but complaints are not the starting points if complaints are about what precedes them complaints take us back and what I want to do in this section is to back up so one student gives an account of turning up at a postgraduate retreat they were making jokes jokes are horrific they were doing it at a very small space in front of staff and nobody was saying a thing and I felt like my reaction to it was out of kilter of everyone else's it felt really disconnected the way I felt about the way they were behaving and the way everybody else was laughing they were talking about milking I still can't quite get to the bottom of where the jokes were coming from nobody was saying anything about it people were just laughing along you start to stand out in that way you were just not playing along that sexist expression of milking seems to have a history and each time that expression is used that history is thrown out like a line a line you have to follow if you were to get anywhere when laughter fills the room like water in a cup laughter as holding something it can feel like there's no room left to experience such strokes as offensive is to become alienated not only from the jokes but the laughter that surrounds them propping them up giving them somewhere to go and just by not laughing not going along with something she starts to stand out I think this is very important a complaint can be registered before anything is even said expressed by how a body is not attuned to an environment to express commune to squeeze something out and sometimes a complaint seems to seep out rather like liquid oozing through the crack in a wall another instance a junior female lecturer was sexually harassed by a senior male professor mainly through constant verbal communications he he emailed her about wanting to suck her toes for instance she thought she'd handled this by asking her lie manager to ask him to stop not knowing that her lie manager had sat on that request so when an attempt to stop harassment is stopped harassment does not stop and then I was in a meeting with my line manager and her line manager and we were in this little office space like a glass fishbowl type meeting room and then the main office where all the staff guests were and he emailed me and I made a sound oh there's no way to articulate it someone's just dragging your insides like a meat grinder oh god this is not gonna stop and I made that sound out loud and my line managers Lyman just said what's happened and I turned my computer around and showed him and he said for sake how stupid do you have to be to put that in an email you can see a look of panic on her face like crap this has not magically gone away that sound that ah pierces the meeting that meeting taking place in the little glass room a fishbowl where they can all be seen something can become visible and audible sometimes even despite yourself a complaint is what comes out that you can't take it anymore you just can't take it anymore your insides like a meat grinder a complaint is how you're turned inside out this also means of course that a complaint can acquire a life of its own the email in fact was read by others her sound becoming an alert leading to a formal complaint process that she herself did not initiate and note how the problem once acknowledged is applied to be not so much the harassment but that there was evidence of it for sake how stupid do you have to be to put that in an email and as sound becomes a complaint because it brings to the surface of violence that would otherwise not have to be fast and so a complaint teaches us about how violence is often dealt with by not being fast and those who faced up to violence end up being on the receiving end going back to the case of the post graduate student it is because she experienced a set of behaviors and speeches as violent as being unacceptable that the violence gets we channeled in her direction he specifically went from he verbally at a table where everyone was eating lunch it was a large table of numerous amounts of people around it including staff I was having quite a personal conversation with someone and he literally leant across the table or physically came forward he was slightly just me he was really close and he said oh my god I can see you ovulating because she had not found the jokes funny because she expressed that she was not condoning that behavior because she was not happy with what was going on he comes after her her personal space invaded words flung out flung act she is reduced to body pulled back woman as ovaries she's not allowed to do her own thing to have a conversation with others to be occupied as a student words can be how spaces are occupied and how bodies can take up those spaces as if those spaces belong to them she describes what followed in the experience I think that staff member knew I was deeply upset by it I pretty much left the table and he the staff member followed me out instead of the conversation this is when probably in hindsight it starts to get difficult in that staff members had to lean on me immediately he said to me oh you know what he's like he's got a really strange sense of humor he didn't mean anything by it and the implication was I was being a bit oversensitive and then I could take a joke and that I need to sort of forget about it and move on so note then that the effort to stop the student from complaining about the situation is made in the situation before the complaint ever materialise she's told not to say anything not to be ever sensitive not to do anything not to cause trouble and note to how those who identify harassment as harassment are harassed all the more the staff member by by leaning in this way positions himself with the harasser treating the verbal onslaught as a joke something she should just take and keep taking so the harassment harasser physically comes forward the staff member leans on her the response to harassment is harassment that is the institutional response harassment can be the attempt to try to stop someone from identifying harassment this powerful testimony teaches us how complaint is right in the middle of something right in the thick of it a complaint is thus imminent it is what you have to do because of how spaces are occupied this is why the experiences that lead to complaint and the experiences of complaint I had to untangle they are often part of the very same experience sometimes you might have to make a complaint in order even to be able to enter a room one academic describes how she has to keep pointing out that rooms are inaccessible because they keep booking rooms that are inaccessible she has to keep saying it because they keep doing it I worry about drawing attention to myself but this is what happens when you hire a person in a wheelchair there have been major access issues at the University she spoke of the drain the exhaustion the sense of why should I have to be the one who speaks out you have to speak out because others do not and because you speak out others can justify their own silence they hear you so it becomes about you major access issues become your issues and a complaint is then treated as a broken record as if she is the one who is stuck on the same point if you do speak out you end up out a complaint that can be how you are heard you are heard as complaining when you identify a problem and to hear someone as making a complaint can be how that problem is smoothed over you hear them so you don't hear what it is they're trying to address Audrey Lord showed how speaking about race or racism as women of color Fay is often heard as getting in the way of smooth communication on earth if women of color use the word racism we are heard as complaining racism as such is heard as complaint one woman of color academic describes to me I was on the equality and diversity group in the university and as soon as I started mentioning things to do with race they change the portfolio of who could be on the committee and I was dropped so if we do end up on those diversity committees we're supposed to do that work with a smile in other words our job becomes to smooth things over smoothing things over acquires removing traces of histories that get in the way of an occupation of space she adds whenever you raise something the response is that you're not one of them not one of them it's almost as if a complaint amplifies what makes you not fit picking up what you are not and then a complaint about how some do not belong can be used as evidence that some do not belong if you have to complain to enter a room or to stay in that room you are complaining about a structure not an event or a structure as well as an event some have to complain about the very structures that enable the progression of others so a complaint might begin then with a feeling of structure you notice a structure when it stops you from entering a room or being seated at a table it can hit you like a wall and here is eyes yet another difficulty which I would describe as a life difficulty if we were to complain about structures we were be complaining all the time and make maybe that's what sometimes it feels like what we're doing but sometimes then because it's exhausting in order to do that work our work we might our souls make use of files putting aside what it what makes it difficult to do the work so a woman attends a meeting for senior managers she's the only woman at the table but she's used to this she's got used to this this is business as usual the usual is the structural in temporal form but then one of the men at the table makes a sexist and sexualizing comment about chasing a woman around the darkroom she described her the comp became a bonding moment between men how the atmosphere in the room change laughter interests as if that'll been brought to attention after expressing her feelings to me of rage alienation disappointment but also sadness she said you Father under don't go there and this is what many of us do or try to do to keep going we might put aside what is hardest to handle creating our own complaint files of course our own complaint files are full of what we have already noticed the file don't go there tells us where we have been so earlier I introduced a figure of the would-be complainer as the one who was indicated to themselves or to others that they are considering filing a complaint but you could become the complainer without giving any such indication it can be hard to do certain kinds of political or institutional work without being heard as a complainer so that figure can be a file the complainant is a rather stuffed file and then if you do file a complaint you are as it were already inhibiting that file you are as it were confirming a judgment about you that has already been made as Lela Whitley and Tiffany page of reserve have observed when a woman files an objection to sexual harassment she becomes in the language of the institution a woman who complains a by extension a complainer and then becoming a complainer you can hear how the organization hears you and you can end up internalizing that voice doubting yourself an early career lecturer describes I've been told I have a chip on my shoulder that I've got a chip on my shoulder because I am Jewish that I have a chip on my shoulder because I'm foreign living in this country and you're upset about brexit well because you're gay and you're just looking for the problems and he started thinking am i looking for these problems I just turn it in words is it me that my fault I lay away at night thinking is actually problem with me here chip chip chip if we chip away at the old block no wonder they find that chip on our shoulders but if you keep having a problem you can still end up feeling like the problem is with you another academic describes how becoming a complainer can then take you away from your work if you have a situation and you make a complaint then you are the woman who complains a lesbian who complains and it gets in the way of being in the role being a good colleague a good mentor great teacher or supervisor and you can feel the change in your voice and the dynamic and meetings and you don't like to hear self talking like that but you end up being in that situation again and you think it's me and you think no it's systemic and you think it's me that conversation you have with yourself it's me it's the system it's me it's a system that conversation takes time and it can feel like everything just ends up spinning around spinning spinning maybe you reach a point a breaking point where you might fly off the handle rather like that broken cup and it all just spills out she describes further and then of course you get witch-hunters you get a scapegoat you become the Troublesome uppity woman you become the woman who does not fit you become everything the bully accuses you off because nobody's listening to you and you hear some stones take that not petulant iron bangs table come on you can hear them saying oh there you go a diversity practitioner said something very similar to me that she only had to open her mouth and meetings to wit eyes rolling as if to say oh here she goes both times we laughed it can be a relief to have an experience put into words the feminist killjoy that liquor container she comes up here she comes up in what we can hear we hear each other in the way and the tear of the words we share we hear what it's like to come up against the same thing over and over again it was from experiences like this that I developed my equation rolling eyes equals feminist pedagogy so this next section is called closing the door I open my lecture by showing how complaint can lead to an institution being registered all the more intensely the corridors the windows of blinds that come down glass walls brick walls tables chairs doors of locks on them in fact doors keep coming up in my data so many of my interviewees describe how complaints happen behind closed doors if complaint provides data that data is kept under lock and key I'm speaking to an academic about the first complaint she made when she was a student one of her lecturers on her course had been making her feel uncomfortable and one time she enters his room and then one time I went into his office to talk to him about something was an office a bit like this but without any glass with a door that opened in wasn't open on a latch and he pushed me up against the back of the door and tried to kiss me and I pushed him away it wasn't it pushed him away and try to get out of the room and it was a horrible moment because I realized I couldn't actually it was very difficult to operate the latch we are back to the door the back of the door a door that glass solid can't be seen through a door is what you were pushed against the latch sure won't open getting stuck trying to get out the work you have to do to get out she did get out of the room but it was hard behind closed doors harassment happens there out of view in secret he can be locked in locked out doors have something else to teach us they teach us a significance of a complaint about harassment being lodged in the same place where the harassment happened a door is shut on her and the same door is shut on a complaint the same door she submits an informal complaint a letter detailing the assault and where does her complaint go her letter ends up with the Dean and what does the Dean do the Dean basically told me I shall sit down have a cup of tea with the guy to sort it out so often a response to a complaint about harassment is to minimize harassment as if what occurred is just a minor squabble between two parties something that can be sorted out by a cup of tea their English signifier of reconciliation a complaint they will become our failure your failure to resolve the situation more amicably she does not proceed to a formal complaint her complaint was stopped he was not now I say her complaint was stopped rather than she was stopped because she did go on to have a career she's now a professor but this experience of being assaulted when she was a student stayed with her she described I thought I got a first because of academic merit but then after this thing happened I remember thank you but hang on maybe not maybe this was some sort of ruse to try and keep me in the institution so he could keep the contact going it starts undermining your own sense of your academic merit the quality of your work and all that kind of stuff being harassed by Electra damages your sense of self-worth intellectual worth leading you to question yourself doubt yourself her complaint was stopped she was not but she carries that history with her her complaint was stopped he was not what happened to him she tells us he was a known harasser there were lots of stories about him I had a friend who was very vulnerable he took advantage of that she ended up taking her own life she ended up taking her own life so much more pain so much more damage at the edges of one woman's story of damage he went on he was allowed to go armed when her complaint and for all we know there were others too we do not know how many said no did not stop him and he has since retired much respected by his peers no blemish on his record no blemish on his record no blemish on the institution's record the damage carried by those who did complain or would complain if they could complain is carried around like baggage slow heavy down to hear complaint is to hear from those weighed down by a history that has left little trace in the official records and organizations become a line with those who abuse the power given to them by virtue opposition because they share an interest in stopping what is recorded by the complaint from getting out so damage to a person is deflected by being treated as damage to the institution or damage to a person if a person is indeed identified by a complaint and that damage is often a vote through or as concern as concern for the consequences for how much he or they would have to lose reputation status standing and so on this concern for the consequences of complaint can manifest as a concern for a shared project or program one student leave complained about bullying and harassment from other students on her program was told you are endangering the director's job you're endangering the whole esse funding you are going to ruin any chance for this innovative work continuing so when a program is understood as innovative or even radical a complaint can be treated as conservative or even reactionary as an attempt to stop something innovative from happening if exposing bullying or harassment would threaten a program there is a problem with the program but you can still be made to feel that to expose the problem would endanger the program the image of a person or a program as critical or rad or can be useful as enables complaints to be dismissed as disciplinary or management techniques this is why it is just too easy and even wrong to identify management or human resources as the source of some of the problems I'm describing that identification can even be another way their complaints are stopped in other words academic networks are protected by identifying complaints with the management of those networks so many of those I spoke to describe meetings of heads of department or Dean's where there is a sustained attempt to stop them from making a complaint I've shared such stories with you already now we could interpret these meetings as evidence of top-down bullying for management and that does go on but that would still only capture some of what is going on heads of department and Dean's indeed might be operating not only as managers but also as colleagues and sometimes even as close personal friends of those whose conduct is under question and this is where it gets hard so another example a black woman academic was being racially harassed and bullied by a white woman colleague but when she complains this is familiar she's the one who was vilified and so my complaint then became me being vilified internally I became the one who told a lie that's me told a lie because that couldn't have possibly happened because this wonderful white woman is such a nice person she's completely non racist she would never say such a thing and she kind of walked around crying all the time looking very upset later when another white colleague becomes a head of department that colleague says I want you to reconcile with her because after all she's my friend and colleague and all she ever did was write you some long emails she is my friend racial harassment can be reduced here to just a style of communication just a few long emails and a complaint about racism becomes damage to a friend and an expression of desire for reconciliation it might appear as a friendly gesture but there is nothing friendly about this gesture if a black woman does not return the desire for reconciliation if she's not willing to smooth things over moving on as getting on she becomes mean the one who has not only broken a connection but refused to repair it so whiteness then operates as a web of live connections and sympathy as such is distributed sympathy becomes part of the machinery friendly like a machine can be built then from past allegiances so complaints about harassment and not only received by those who share allegiances but those allegiances are often explicitly brought up sending a clear message to the complainer about how their complaint will be received when a student made a complaint after being sexually assaulted by a lecturer he had forced himself on her in his office after locking the door she is called to a meeting with three women professors and a mount Dean and she describes the meeting for us one the professor said last thing for instance our he's always like this isn't he always be seductive and funny he's always been like this since we were studying together he also touches me when talking what so while the other was saying Ah I known him so many years it must be some misunderstanding for sure while the other was just smiling and nodding before even having heard what I had to say a history can be casually a vote studying together I have known him for years a complaint about assault dismiss as misunderstanding smiling nodding it is right he is right you are wrong you are wrong in him and a complaint then can be stopped because of what is shared because of who is share friendships bloaty's personal and professional affection becoming like cement in a wall a bond a bind be kind he's one of a kind one of our kind so by closing the door really we're also talking about closing ranks when you're shown the back of a door their backs have become doors as another student described they have each other's backs and these historical connections they are kept alive as communication pathways how information is passed on a line where it gets stopped a complaint functions rather like a switch an alarm or an alert that triggers a reaction a complaint is how a network comes alive to protect those who were the most network can almost hear the buzz of electricity or the phone lines becoming busy the more someone is connected the more others become invested in that connection so a complaint is threatening an investment one student who participated in a collective a complaint about harassment from a professor describes we were accused of having caused a disruption in their studies they Valley they decided to have him as a professor over those who are suffering psychologically because of his harassment we need to be in solidarity with those his education was now being disrupted not the other way around so a complaint is frame then as a loose connection as a lack of solidarity with others who are cut off from a source of information and energy and it did I think we could think of the famous killjoy as a loose connection almost like a faulty wiring causing damage by virtue of not being properly attached you can also experience complaint as having to become your own killjoy one PhD student described how hard it was to recognize that she was being harassed by her supervisor he was otherwise giving her helpful feedback and she recognized that only once he reached a certain point he started sending her photographs of his genitals and she said I felt like I would take myself down by admitting to the kind of violence he was enacting take myself down when you admit to that violence it becomes real for you such that you can feel that you've stopped yourself from doing what you need to progress and complaints have so much to teach us about progression when one mA student made a complaint about the conduct of the most senior member of her department she's told by the convener of the program be careful he is an important man be careful a warning not to proceed is a statement about who is important importance it's not just a judgment it is a direction and a professor becomes a conductor information energy and resources travel through him I would describe this becoming as institutional funneling paths become narrower and narrower at the exit points so you might have to go through this professor to get anywhere this student went ahead with her complaint and her terms she sacrificed the references and it referenced the prospect of doing a PhD she said that door is closed that door is closed references to can function as doors mechanisms that enable an opening or closing how it is made possible for some to progress others not reference systems are paper trails letter sent out there how some are enabled by the connections how they gather speed and velocity more and more faster and faster he is an important man many do not make complaints because they feel there cannot afford to lose the references to lose the connections and there also then the punishment for complaint can entail the me withdrawal of support to a draw support is enough to stop someone from getting somewhere a complain about an abuse of power teaches us about power it teaches us how power can work for what seems like a very light touch the mere lift of a supportive hand can function as a heaviest of weights stopping someone slowing them down a complaint must teaches us how the more a power is dispersed the more powers dispersed through a network the more it gets concentrated in certain hands a complaint teaches us how power manifests as though withdrawal of support for those who show how power manifests and a complaint teaches us how power works by increasing the costs of challenging how power works the complaints have a lot to teach us this is my conclusion is called complaint collective in order to proceed with or to complaint we often have to form a collective one more example for mobile search a woman of color sets up a writing group in her department the meetings became dominated by senior men what I found in each of the meetings were senior men who were bullying everyone in the room the bullying took the form of the constant belittling of the work of more junior academics as well as postgraduate students the first session someone was just really being abusive about someone's PhD saying it was rubbish racist comments are made I'm from London and London is just right for ethnic cleansing she described how people laughed and how that laughter filled the room she comments on these comments these are the sorts of things being aired these are the sorts of things being aired even the air can be occupied she decides to make a complaint because she wanted it recorded and because the culture was being reproduced for new PhD students so a complaint becomes a recording device you have to record what you do not want to reproduce so she gathers statements from 20 people in her department a complaint can be a collective a meeting is set up in response to a complaint and that that meeting she was described by the head of Human Resources as having a chip on her shoulder that chipped coming up again as if she's complaining because she saw she adds they treated the submission as an act of arrogance on my part it is as if she put the complaint forward as a way of putting herself forward a complaint is treated as self-promotional a feminist we can be still heard as me when those who try to stop a culture from being reproduced as stopped a culture as being reproduced but if we try to stop something and we're stopped we know stuff there is an intimacy between how much we know and how we work together we know that the engine of social reproduction only appears to run efforts effortlessly we know what it takes to keep things running the early career lecturer whose description of making a complaint as a little bird scratching away at something I began with spoke of how her complaint led her to find out about other complaints it was quite amazing actually to find that in my department there were more than a handful of staff who were there complaining about the same issues but all of us were doing it not in silence but in an atomized way so that none of us knew actually that we were all having similar problems and we were making similar complaints a complaint is how you come to identify a problem that I shared similar complaints similar problems the process the procedures are designed to treat us like atoms kept small by being kept apart but how we combine how we combine my own complaint project came out of how we combined our forces when I made the reasons for my resignation public I shared information not actually very much but just enough that there have been these inquiries that they had taken place and I became a leak drip-drip organisations will try and contain that damage this is how public relations works as damage limitation and this is how diversity often takes institutional form as damage limitation happy shiny policies will be put in place holes that bow departures will be filled without reference to what went on before a block becoming something to be wiped up and whacked away mopping up a mess but there is hope here because they cannot mop up all of our mess a leak can be a lead a leak can be a feminist lead by becoming a leak I became easier to find people came to me with their complaints that we find each other through complaint is a finding so it might seem that complaints that do not get anywhere disappear without a trace but in saying no we keep a history alive we do not let go those scratches on the wall they are what we leave behind even when our complaints lead us to leave we leave something of ourselves behind but complaining at the time those scratches seemed only to show the limits of what we accomplished but what appears a scratch and scribble like that sound remember that ah they can be testimony we hear an O in a scramble of letters a complaint becomes writing on the wall we can hear we are here we did not get used to it so even complaints that do not get anywhere they can lead us to each other a postgraduate student made an informal complaint about white supremacy in her classroom using that kind of term for what is here at the university can get you in serious trouble she knew that but she was willing to do that and she became in her terms a monster and indigenous feminist monster and she is now completing her PhD off-campus but she said that an unexpected little gift was how other students could come to her they know you are out there and they can reach out to you so complaints become a kind of transgenerational intimacy an alternative communication network not all complaint collectors are made up of those who are physically present were in the same place at the same time and yet we combine we combine our forces to complain is to lift a lid the more complaints are suppressed and to suppress is to restrain and restrict as well as to keep something secret the more spills out it can be explosive what comes out even what or who has been been or buried can acquire a life those complaints in the graveyard can come back to haunt institutions it is a promise thank you visit wheeler Center calm for the best in books writing and ideas from Melbourne Australia and the world [Music]

Channel: WheelerCentre

Views: 33,666

Keywords: Ideas, Melbourne, Australia, Conversation, The Wheeler Centre, Victoria, Writing, Sara Ahmed, Complaint, Feminism, Gender, Academia, Institutions, Harassment, Universities, University

Id: 4j_BwPJoPTE

Length: 63min 53sec (3833 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 29 2018