COMPLAINT

Issue 1 Autumn/Winter

COMPLAINT

To whom it may concern,

We are two post-doctoral research fellows who have been working on projects concerned with Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at the Institute of Advanced Studies over 2021-22, and are co-editors of this issue of Think Pieces. Working with and from Sara Ahmed’s book Complaint!  and focusing on the context of higher education in the UK, we have created a poly-vocal and multimedia space for reflection on the experiences and processes of complaint.    

To contend with questions around risk, anonymity, consequence and catharsis when making complaints in and about higher education, we invited:   

complaints – anonymous or otherwise – from students and staff involved in delivering EDI-related work, and/or those whom EDI initiatives attempt to reach;

contributions from people who are not normally expected or allowed to complain, who might complain on behalf of someone or something else, who may self-censor because their position in an institution may require anonymity, as well as those whose complaints feel ongoing and unresolved;    

ambivalence, delight and discontent, grievance and gratitude, and serious and mischievous impulses;   

past reflections, present queries, and future hopes.

Complaint processes, effects, formats and languages reveal consequences and contingencies about who can risk complaining and who is meaningfully heard when they do so. The ethical imperative of our research and editorial work on EDI at the Institute of Advanced Studies has been to knead these knots and attend to their complexity. Time taken with complaint is not to only broach some catharsis or recognition, but to better strategise and strengthen forms of response. What if complaint becomes normalised as an ethics of care? Could the complaint be elevated as the problem, not the complainer?    

We thank each contributor for their insight and generosity.  

Yours faithfully,    

Disgruntled of Bloomsbury
(Alexandra Baybutt and Lo Marshall)

P.S. We are indebted to Sara Ahmed’s work that is present throughout this edition, but we mark her absence. We did not invite a contribution from Ahmed because of the public tweet on 1 February 2022 announcing her decision to ‘boycott UCL’.