Quotes from Sara Ahmed

But think of this: those of us who arrive in an academy that was not shaped by or for us bring knowledges, as well as worlds, that otherwise would not be here. Think of this: how we learn about worlds when they do not accommodate us. Think of the kinds of experiences you have when you are not expected to be here. These experiences are a resource to generate knowledge.

A significant step for a feminist movement is to recognize what has not ended. And this step is a very hard step. It is a slow and painstaking step. We might think we have made that step only to realize we have to make it again.

an institution being willing to appoint someone (to transform the institution) is not the same thing as an institution being willing to be transformed (by someone who is appointed). An appointment can even be about an appearance: being given a diversity mandate might be how an institution appears willing to be transformed.

The more nots you are, the more committees you might end up on. Not being not can mean being less likely to end up doing this kind of work. Given that diversity work is typically less valued by organizations, then not being not can mean having more time to do more-valued work.

Perhaps sometimes we just can't do this; it means being prepared to be undone, and we just don't know if we are ready to put ourselves back together again

Gentrification is a public policy for managing strangers: a way of removing those who would be eyesores; those who would reduce the value of a neighborhood; those whose proximity would be registered as price.

Your own body becomes used as evidence that the walls of which you speak are not there or are no longer there; as if you have eliminated the walls through your own progression. You got through, so they are not there.

It is certainly the case that responsibility for diversity and equality is unevenly distributed. It is also the case that the distribution of this work is political: if diversity and equality work is less valued by organizations, then to become responsible for this work can mean to inhabit institutional spaces that are also less valued.

Individuals within the institution must act as if the decision has been made for it to be made. If they do not, it has not. A

Within the organization there is a gap between words and deeds, between what organizations say they will do, or what they are committed to doing, and what they are doing.

And then your frustration can be taken as evidence of your frustration, that you speak this way, about this or that, because you are frustrated. It is frustrating to be heard as frustrated; it can make you angry that you are heard as angry.

Alienation is studious; you learn more about wishes when they are not what you wish for.

A complaint can be how you live with yourself because a complaint is an attempt to address what is wrong, not to cope with something, not to let it happen, not to let it keep happening. You refuse to adjust to what is unjust. A complaint can be a way of not doing nothing. I think the double negative is often the terrain of complaint

A complaint can come out of a sense that unless you complain, the same thing will keep happening. In other words, a complaint can be what you have to make to stop the same thing from happening.

An old syllabus, an old word, an old policy: these habits hold despite the modifications. The modifications made in response to previous complaints can end up reproducing the structure the complaints were about.

complaining often means drawing attention to yourself at the very time you draw attention to structures.

A complaint becomes a recording device; you have to record what you do not want to reproduce. This is what I mean by complaint as nonreproductive labor: all the work you have to do in order not to reproduce an inheritance.

after all, it is this noticing that makes things real.

A structure can enable promotion. And if you challenge those structures, you are the one who becomes self-promotional.

If a world can be what we learn not to notice, noticing becomes a form of political labor.

Jennifer Doyle (2015, 33) observes that "the filing of a complaint often leads to the filing of more complaints—counter-complaints and complaints about the complaints process." The immanence of complaints—complaints are made in situations that complaints are about—could be well described as a crash site: to complain is to collide into other complaints. Another way of saying this: some complaints get uptake; others do not.

Marilyn Frye (1983, 88) describes anger as akin to a speech act: "It cannot 'come off' if it doesn't

get uptake." Some complaints get uptake, which is to say, they come off, they survive a collision.

The technologies we have available to challenge abuses of power—from complaints procedures to antidiscrimination policies to equality polices to the very languages of