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Ep. 24. Sara Ahmed, No is Not a Lonely Utterance: the Art and Activism of Complaining
155 Plays19 days ago
In this episode, I talk to Sara Ahmed about her book No is Not a Lonely Utterance: the Art and Activism of Complaining (2025).
Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her most recent book is No is Not a Lonely Utterance: the Art and Activism of Complaining, which was published by Allen Lane in September 2025, and which follows on from The Feminist Killjoy Handbook also published by Allen Lane in 2023. Previous books include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (201$), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Orientations Objects, Others all published by Duke University Press. She blogs at feministkilljoys.com and has a newsletter https://feministkilljoys.substack.com/.
Sara's book recs:
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Survival is a Promise; Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, The Cancer Journals, The Black Unicorn, A Burst of Light
Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Follow Sara on Bluesky (@saranahmed) or Instagram (@feministkilljoyatwork). Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to Books Up Close Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers, and anyone interested in language.
Introduction to Sarah Ahmed and Her Work
00:00:10
Speaker
In today's episode, I talk to Sarah Ahmed about a passage from her book, No is Not a Lonely Utterance, The Art and Activism of Complaining.
00:00:19
Speaker
Sarah is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional
The Art and Labor of Close Reading
00:00:29
Speaker
cultures. Welcome, Sarah. Nice to see you Thank you. Thank you for having me, Chris. I'm really pleased to be here.
00:00:35
Speaker
Of course, you know how much of a fan I am of you and your work and how much it reverberates in my brain at all times. So it's really good to have you here to talk through this new book, No Is Not A Lonely Utterrance, which is really exciting. and we're going to read a passage from near the end in a moment and talk about that.
00:00:52
Speaker
But before we go there, the question I ask everyone is, how do you feel about close reading as practice, as as Oh, I mean, it's it's a good question. You know, when I hear the words close reading, I do still think back to my own training as a literature student, learning how to close read, how to think about poetry and language, what to pay attention to. In fact, I was thinking about this the other day that my modernism literature course, one of the comments on my essay was, has a tendency to see significance everywhere. So I think there's always something about my relationship to close reading. It was always almost like hyper closeness to to the text I was engaged with. but But when I think about close reading, I think the word that really matters to me is the close.
The Significance of Everyday Objects
00:01:37
Speaker
And I think of close reading in relationship to close writing, close listening, It's like proximity as a kind of relationship that takes work and that involves labour. Because in a way, there's a lot that's quite close to us that we don't notice, that we don't attend to because we're used to it. It's just there. So I also think about closeness as a way of actually learning to notice what is around us and to pick up significance that we might have missed because it is so familiar. One one of the reasons I wrote a lot about tables was for that reason, that the tables are mentioned as examples in philosophy, but you're not supposed to look at them because they're not the point.
00:02:17
Speaker
But when you begin to actually notice the table, this object that's meant only to illustrate, then the table has its own life. and you can follow a journey. So for for for me, close reading is about the labour of noticing what is already there, and then having a journey by thinking about what is there, each bit that's assembled as having its own life is taking new places.
00:02:42
Speaker
I mean, for you, do you think we don't notice enough just because of habituation? Or do you think we're trained not to notice for particular reasons?
Habituation and Noticing the Unseen
00:02:51
Speaker
I think both. I mean, I think that they ah both matter. I think there's a way in which becoming familiar or becoming used to something, that that kind of sense of habituation can mean just becoming comfortable or relaxed and and not seeing something can just be a sign of or being at home somewhere. And it might be that you really notice that the vase on the mantelpiece isn't there because it's usually there. So you notice the vase when it's missing. So there's a way in which when things are as you expect them to be, you pass over them. But I think there are certain parts of our social landscape that we're taught not to notice, that we're taught not to see as young people, perhaps the homeless person, that's always there just at the beginning of the of the street. You're taught to hurry past what is seen to get in the way of how you occupy space. So the hurrying past, like who or what are we taught to hurry past and and what would it mean to slow down and to actually pay attention? And how would that change then our relationship to the space that we're in or the text that we're reading or the world that we're being accommodated by? so I do think that there is something about close reading that is about time and taking time.
00:04:13
Speaker
And, you know, habits are useful because they speed things up. You don't have to think about something when it's a habit. It allows you to think about other things. So in some ways, being pulled out of our habits, ordinary ways of being comfortable or relaxed is quite important to the ethics of being in a world or a text a little differently.
Reading from 'No is Not a Lonely Utterance'
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, close reading, you know, it's such a spatial metaphor, but the the temporal dimension as well that you're kind of paying attention to is really useful. um And some of that comes up in the extract we can look at today. And this is near the end of the book on, it starts on page 305 for listeners that want to read along. If you haven't bought it, go go buy it. What do you do with yourselves? Go buy the book. It's very pleasing to you, isn't it? please definitely do. And then go buy The Feminist Killed Your Handbook and all the other books, because there are so many. Would you get to read the passage for us first, Sarah, and then we can jump into it?
00:05:05
Speaker
Yes, I'd be abbly pleased to. Remember again the bird's lesson. Disrupting usage and creating a shelter can refer to the same action.
00:05:19
Speaker
We create spaces so we can find each other openings, however small, where we can assemble without being displaced by the letters in the box or displaced too quickly.
00:05:30
Speaker
I added displaced too quickly as spaces created by self-assembly are always precarious. To assemble, to say no, to do no, throws so much open.
00:05:44
Speaker
We throw ourselves into projects that are urgent and necessary, doing what we can, when we can, however we can, in the wear and the tear, for as long as it takes.
00:05:58
Speaker
This is not just about doing what we can to survive ourselves. It is doing what we can so others can survive. Survival can be a promise.
00:06:08
Speaker
to quote from black feminist poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, quoting black feminist poet Audrey Lord, one we make to each other. And so we address each other.
00:06:22
Speaker
Little ghosts, little birds, a complaint graveyard, a queer nest. To make a nest possible, to make it possible to nest,
00:06:35
Speaker
We have to stop what usually happens happening, more letters being posted, piling up, taking up space. So many of our efforts, our complaints, our protests also end up buried in the same pile, leaving us with less air.
00:06:50
Speaker
We have to fight then to breathe, creating pockets within institutions or outside of them so we can keep doing the work, using whatever we have handy.
00:07:04
Speaker
We end up with so many materials. What a mess. Yes, that mess can be a picture of our complaints, a picture of our lives. That mess can also be a queer map telling us where we have been, our comings and goings.
00:07:23
Speaker
Thank you so much. Lovely to hear you read that. And you really get a sense, I think, as you're reading of the way you're so interested in language in all of your books, right? Even when you're communicating something else, like you're paying attention to the rhythm of the line, the pacing, the way language or words repeat language.
00:07:41
Speaker
One of the things I think about your work so often is that like you pick up a word and then you're like, let me just look at it in a few different ways. Right. And maybe that's the habituation thing we were talking about earlier. Right. Like we're so used to using a word in a particular way. that You kind of forget all of these other kind of inferences or the kind of textures that have accrued to it over time. And I think this is a really good ah example of where how you do this.
00:08:02
Speaker
Displaced, assemble, address these words that you come back to and kind of rethink. I guess maybe that's part of your literary training, as you said, but, you know, is is that how you would describe your kind of orientation to like how you think about the world that you're, you're trying to look at it in in different angles or kind of in different light?
The Political Potential of Words
00:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I guess I think about words as materials, as object-like. And if you put an object in a certain position, you see it from a certain perspective, you get so much. You move it around, you get something else. So that kind of sense of moving something around to capture different significance. That's certainly part of what I think of as a practice of the work itself. And, you know, when I when i wrote about What's the Use, my book on on the the uses of use, you know, playing with the word use, I guess, slightly annoying to some people, no doubt, but playing with words is something that just intrigues me. But one of the ideas is that, you know, to queer use is to use something in a way that was not intended. It was not intended for that use or that person And I think with words too, that there are ways in which words have a a typical arrangement, how we know them, they get used in a very particular way. They get organised into sentences and paragraphs, into chunks of meaning where they get settled. And part of like a kind of queer, kind of close proximity to language for me is about not just that different words have many meanings, but that you can sort of... um
00:09:33
Speaker
throw a word open by thinking about unintended meanings or meanings that are not ordinarily understood to to to to be in a word, to reside in a word or to be near a word. You can bring out its got of queer potential. And that a lot of words, um in a way, once a a word has caught my attention, then i used to describe it as following it around. and And some of the words that first caught my attention are words would have been used against me. Like, you know, in a way, the word killjoy was a word that is a stereotype about feminists. So it's miserable feminists who make misery their mission.
00:10:12
Speaker
And, you know, it's a word that's been thrown at us to dismiss the kind of politics we have or the point of view we articulate. And then you kind of like, you you take that word and you use it to give it ah another angle on that history. And you begin to say, well, actually, if questioning sexism or homophobia or transphobia makes you unhappy, kills your joy, then so be it.
00:10:36
Speaker
And so you, You accept the history of how that word has been used, but you don't allow that acceptance to delimit possibility. You allow the kind of history of that word, the way it's been used as a tool to make certain people seem smaller or strange or unacceptable. you actually rework that history and you turn it around so that the no that has been expressed toward you, you redirect to the institution, you redirect towards those who use that word against you. So that kind of like opening up with the potential of a word to signify anew has a real political point to it. It's not just about, oh, let's play with different words and see what they mean. It's partly about recognizing how words get used to delimit and to contain and then trying to unleash the potential for them to mean something else is also about freeing ourselves from those containers.
Revealing Potential Through Close Reading Practices
00:11:35
Speaker
i love the I love the way you put that. Because because for me, the this whole podcast project is a about you know trying to show what happens in a literature classroom to people outside it, right? Like the kinds of things we get up to with texts, but also like the possibilities of things you could do with texts.
00:11:50
Speaker
And then the world as text, right? that Language isn't just neutral, arbitrary. You know, it's not just like natural in the world. Like we've decided how it works. And I think one of the things in this passage that stands out to me is kind of picking up a word and seeing it in in maybe like two ways. So remembering again the bird's lesson, disrupting usage and creating a shelter can refer to the same action.
00:12:12
Speaker
So you've got kind of like these two different ways of describing the same thing, but disrupting usage and creating a shelter. You know, people might see that they're radically different things, right? yeah But we think we create spaces so we can find each other, openings, however small, where we can assemble without being displaced by the letters in the box or displaced too quickly.
00:12:31
Speaker
You're kind of circling around these kind of words to kind of like prise open the kind of possibilities that they could refer to. And the bird's lesson, I guess, is the mailbox story in in this book that you picked up in other books as well.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that that that actually, the the birds that turn the post box into a nest are one of the primary examples I use of queer youth. So, you know, um i i saw it, I saw ah ah an image that said, please do not use the box, because the birds are turning the post box into a nest. So please don't use the box as assigned to would be posters of letters, not to use a box, because that's now become a nest from the point of view of the birds. That's what the box is for. So they that the birds have turned a small opening intended for the letters into a door, a queer door, I would say, a way of getting in and out of the box. So I began to think of those birds that turn a postbox into a nest as our queer kin. They are creating room for themselves, space for themselves, and what would otherwise be a hostile environment. Because, of course,
00:13:33
Speaker
if you kept posting the letters, the birds would be displaced. So i kind of like, I first used that image of the post box that's become a nest in my book, What's the Use? But it it really, um for me, helped me to rethink what I call diversity work, the work we have to do because we're not accommodated by institutions, or the work we have to do to make institutions more accommodating. So the birds, when I think about the birds lesson, I'm i'm actually being quite literal here, that the birds helped me to see something about about that labour. Like when you think about ah the ways in which sometimes institutions work
00:14:14
Speaker
you can You can enter a room or ah or a building and just feel a wall that says to you you're not meant to be here. You don't belong here. This is not for you.
00:14:24
Speaker
And that wall that tells you this is not for you won't be visible, tangible or perceptible to those for whom the institution is accommodating.
00:14:36
Speaker
And so there was something about the birds, the the queer youths that they put the postbox to, is a kind of happy story, you know, happy image. But actually to queer use usually requires doing more than just turning up. Usually we have to work quite hard. And so when I was doing the research on complaint, talking to people who had made complaints about um ableism, ah sexism, racism, harassment, bullying, transphobia, the common thread was a complaint, not the thing the complaint was about. Although almost all the people I spoke to were complaining about um discrimination or harassment agonistization. exclusion of one form or another. But when I was doing this research, one person, her pseudonym is Viola in the book, used this description of a complaint. She said, it was like a little bird scratching away at something, which is such an evocative image. You have a real sense of how you can feel quite small. In fact, she repeated the word small in her testimony, small, small, small.
00:15:41
Speaker
She felt really small. She was neurodivergent. trying to get the time that she needed to do her work. She did not get the time she needed to do her work. In fact, her complaint just took up more time, time that she didn't have, time that she needed.
00:15:57
Speaker
And she shared this image and it really spoke to me. And I i could almost hear the scratching, the sound. the little bird scratching away at something. And of course, immediately having already written about the birds turning postbooks into a nest, that though my little ears pricked up when she evoked that image. And so I heard something in it because I'd already been writing about the birds and the way in which they created a space for themselves. It made me really understand something about the labour, how it can feel like scratching away
00:16:30
Speaker
trying to create room for yourself. And so I'm picking up in this passage, this passage it appears towards the end of the book, I'm picking up this layering of birds, these many different birds.
00:16:44
Speaker
and And I can hear, when when I read out that passage just now to you, Chris, I could hear Viola saying it to me, you know, and that's what I think about pop closeness is closeness in listening, in hearing significance is partly about hearing the voices of others and how like one image can be evocative of another image.
00:17:06
Speaker
And they're not just two separate images brought together by some quirky this idiosyncratic person. The images have something to do with each other. They're they're telling us something positive. about each other. And there's of something very dialogic, very much about a dialogue across time and space. And that's what, to me, the joy of research is. When you begin to hear the sound of different images and voices and people, they collect and they gather and they become an assembly, to use another of the words and in the passage.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, you know, you said you used to describe it as following words around, right, as as the words that are kind of like outside of us. But at the same time, you kind of accumulate words, right, and in this book.
00:17:48
Speaker
But also, if you've read the trajectory of your work, as I have, you also hear the accumulation across the books, right, that, you know, you started this thought or this image came up in this book, and now it's here when it's layered with this other image or this other word, it suddenly takes on a new kind of vibrancy and a new kind of like impetus. And that that's also a part of this, the close practice of listening, of reading, of of noticing that actually that image has a lot to do with that image over there.
00:18:14
Speaker
And what I mentioned is how you, you don't just describe that in this book, but you kind of formalize it on the page, right?
A Transformative Lecture Experience
00:18:22
Speaker
but That's what I mean by the kind of like the repetitions or the kind of the turnings around of like sentences that you that you really do need to formalize that for us. it's not It's not just a thing you're seeing, but like it's enacting it in the language.
00:18:34
Speaker
You know, displaced by the letters in the box or displaced too quickly. I added displaced too quickly as spaces created by self-assembly are always precarious. To assemble, to say no, to do no, throw so much open. We throw ourselves into projects.
00:18:48
Speaker
There are so much like accumulation of sound and image and language there, but you're doing it aloud, right? Like I added displaced too quickly as space is created. Not many authors would like tell us what they're doing in the writing.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yes. No, i I like to sort of like almost I think of it as as leaving the trail behind so it can be followed. And, you know I think those two sentences also when I read them, I i can remember giving them as ah as a spoken lecturer. gave a lecture called Changing Institutions on Common Sense and Complaint as um Institutional Legacies at Oxford University just after The students had set up a Palestinian encampment.
00:19:33
Speaker
And as we know, a lot of institutions have used force to try and stop students from protest protesting and pointing to their complicity in genocide. And um but when I gave this lecture, it was a it was it actually really changed things for me, which is interesting because talking about change. Because, you know, I've been very reluctant to to to share my research on complaint in universities, in institutions, really, partly because often the institutions are enacting the very forms of violence I'm describing. And I also got a sense that in being invited into institutions, it was almost like they're giving you the nod.
00:20:10
Speaker
as if they're saying yes to the critique of what they're doing, but that doesn't stop them doing it. And then I can feel like I'm wrapped up in all sorts of complicities that I don't even necessarily know about.
00:20:21
Speaker
But when I gave this lecture, and I partly gave it because of who invited me, which was a group of students, Janice City students, they invited me, they were the ones who wanted me to speak to them because of some of the experiences they'd had, in fact, at the institution I was speaking at. And because just after they had put put pulled together the Palestinian campant encampment, what I found was that the the atmosphere of that encampment had had leaked into the lecture theatre and it was totally different. It was like being in a different space. It was electric.
00:20:52
Speaker
People were loud. there was There was sound. There was noise. And it was just like, you know, because we lecture theatres are so organised to remind us of hierarchy and history, the way they're organised. But it felt like I was in a different kind of space. And I and i thought a lot about that, you know, those sentences are about you know the spaces that we create, however small an opening. it's It's the encampment, yes. it's ah It's the work of assembling together to say no to institutional violence. but the opening is also how that energy leaked into other spaces and how it was transformative of what those spaces were doing and what we were doing in them. And um so even though you will be often displaced if you do the work of occupying buildings the way, and that has been a long history of occupation as a tactic by students, especially within universities, that before they displace you,
00:21:48
Speaker
by whatever means, often through using the law, there are things that you will do. There is activities that you'll be engaged in. And that space is is an opening, is an invitation to think a little bit, to act in another way and to think about how education can be different.
00:22:07
Speaker
when we're actually throwing open what it means or what we are doing when we are assembling. So so that that sentence is sort of, for me, it was was very very much about what it was like to to be reminded that the openings that we create by saying no to institutional violence They can be how um political energy travels.
00:22:29
Speaker
um And that's that's a potentially very transformative action. It doesn't necessarily mean, you know, the the birds you know might be displaced and things might go back to quote unquote business as usual. But in that moment of suspension, other things happened.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, and that, I kind of love the phrasing of to say no, to do no, throw so much open. And again, like throw so much open is a kind of like a passivity, t not a passivity, but you know, like the throwing is being done just by virtue of the no, which could be a a literal I'm saying no or no.
00:23:05
Speaker
It could just be the refusal, right? like yeah That no has these, again, these different resonances of what like no, of what rejection, negation could mean. I think that's a really interesting phrase that you pick up through this book. Like no is not a lonely utterance. It's both an utterance as well as ah an act.
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, I italicise no in each instance of its use, pretty much is each instance. And um the book didn't begin with that title. It was originally called A Complainer's Handbook, following on from the Feminist Killed Joe Handbook. But my editor, um Josephine Greywood, thought she wanted a title that was less prosaic and more poetic. And also the other issue for me was, you know, the way in which complaint and complaining, it can be a hegemonic practice. It's just thinking of Karen, you know, the white woman who complains about and her complaint gets uptake.
00:23:52
Speaker
because she's socially valued, because spaces are presumed to be for her. You know, i did I want to give Karen a handbook? No, i didn't want to give Karen a handbook. So i was actually ah I was actually okay with the change of title, even though when I think of handbook, that word for me, I think of hand.
00:24:10
Speaker
you know, being given a hand or a helping hand or an outstretched hand, the kind of hand that we need is one that helps us, helps pull us out of a difficult situation. But I was still quite happy for it to be no, it's not a lonely utterance. And it helped me to pick up the significance of no throughout, which i mean, no can be relatively simple utterance, yes or no, an answer to a question. But if you're working within a hierarchical institution, whether it's a university or another kind of institution, Saying no can be really, really complicated because it can mean that you lose access to resources. So many people don't say no because they fear the consequences. And the book is partly about that.
The Impact of Saying No in Institutions
00:24:49
Speaker
All the reasons they can build up like piles of letters in a box. All the reasons you're told that saying no will deprive you of what you need to get on or to move on. And yet people have said no.
00:25:02
Speaker
people have complained and they often do so not because they feel that they can change the conditions in which they're working, but because they don't want other people to inherit those conditions. So there's something about that no, which is a kind of ah a hopeful utterance about the possibility of things being otherwise, that it that it takes saying no to, let's say, harassment or bullying for harassment and bullying no longer to be just the way things are.
00:25:32
Speaker
um so that So I partly wanted to sort of talk about kind of this the social and institutional life of a no and the way in which it can have lives that we don't even know about. So a lot a lot of the book is also about the way in which a no, it might feel like it didn't get anywhere or you didn't get anywhere. You might even leave the institution because you didn't get anywhere, but you just don't know who will pick that no up or how that no will become a resource for other people. So there's quite a few stories in the in the book about how, you know, um somebody made a complaint, and then they found out from other people or,
00:26:06
Speaker
through strange means sometimes, about earlier complaints. Like one, Esther made a complaint about disability discrimination, had one of those meetings where you feel the walls coming down. And then suddenly this file appeared in the Students' Union, and it was all of these historical documents about students who'd made that complaint before, and it helped Esther to realise she wasn't on her own. She wasn't the first person to make that complaint. not the She wasn't the only person to make that complaint. She had companions. And so no is not a lonely utterance is also about the companionship of no and how we can find others who say it. But yes, saying it and doing it. And there's a way in which the book is also about the the all the ways that institutions say things or appear to be committed to equality and diversity and yet don't act in a way that is consistent with those forms of appearance. So saying something can sometimes be quite empty. Institutions can
00:27:01
Speaker
say yes, because there's nothing behind that yes to bring it about.
Citation and Connection in Feminist Contexts
00:27:06
Speaker
And then interestingly, no becomes more than words. It requires action. It requires perhaps the withdrawal of your labour or refusal to participate in something. There's all different ways in which a no can be expressed, because I think one of the other things I really wanted to convey with the word complaint itself is is that, you know we tend to think about it in terms of bureaucracy and formal complaint processes, but that's just one meaning. A complaint can also be ah a bodily symptom, like ah a lump in your throat or a pain in your neck. it It can be all the different ways you express dissatisfaction with a situation.
00:27:45
Speaker
And so the range and the kind of like sort of compatiousness of complaint is also something that I'm attending to. And like the gathering that you were just describing and also the kind of gathering of meanings of words to, of people, of words, of action, you you again kind of formalise that on the page in... survival can be a promise to quote black feminist poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, quoting black feminist poet Audre Lorde. And so we address each other, right? There's that you are doing the citational practice in the sentence too, right? You could easily have just given us a footnote, right? Or just, you know, where Gumbs says this, but you are describing the kind of the the history of an idea, like where that's cropped up in thinkers that you're interested in, that you're kind of reading and and how one has influenced another that's influenced another.
00:28:31
Speaker
Right. So that survival can be a promise is you and these this kind of complaint circle with these other thinkers as well. And I think formalizing that in the sentence is quite powerful. I don't think I'd thought about it in that way until I read that sentence that, you know, we know something is like you put at the bottom of the page or, you know, in the end notes.
00:28:50
Speaker
Some people might look at and some people might not. But you're kind of like this is a trajectory, a history, a lineage that I'm telling you is important to this work. Yeah. And, you know, I i really love how Alexis Pauline Gumbs has gathered the work of Audre Lorde and and and made it, brought it to life for new readers um in her book with the title, Survival Can Be a Promise. And that quote from Lorde that Gumbs really picks up and really explores the significance of that of that sentence, which I think from memory is a sentence that was actually cut from the final text, the Lorde text. And
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, i I love the, oh there's a line in um Living a Feminist Life, which, you know, is actually quite an old book now. It's 2017. Citation is feminist memory. And here we might say citation is black feminist memory. so sort of thinking about citation, it's not just about recognising debt or how you acquired an idea.
00:29:50
Speaker
but But citation is a way of keeping it a trail alive, like keeping a connection alive. And there is a ah poetics to that, I think. There is a ah ah kind of like each name and kind of like Black Feminist Park, Black Feminist Park, repeating that. There's something about the the beauty, I think, of how ah how Gums has helps keep Lord alive and how Lord helps keep us alive, that this kind of like survival for Lord is, is ah she she says it in her poem, a literally for survival, some of us were not meant to survive. And she
00:30:27
Speaker
evokes these coming and going. You might hear an echo there from Lorde's poem, A Living for Survival, where she talks about those who come and come and go in the, I don't know if it's the exact language actually, but who are um coming and going in the doorways um in the hours between dawns. So it sort of almost evokes a way in which for many, like survival isn't about coming into the full light of day. It might even be that the shadows where you are not quite seen, the hours between dawn, like there's there's a a kind of a queer sense there that that being underdetected or undetected or not quite being seen also is what might keep certain people alive because actually to come out to be visible, to be seen, is to be at risk or to be endangered. And so there's a kind of like these are the fainter traces and the fainter trails that are almost not quite heard, not quite remembered, that in that kind of like faintness is also a possibility and another kind
Messiness as a Map of Possibilities
00:31:31
Speaker
of inheritance. So there's something that that that i'm I'm trying to pick up there about Lorde's work as a kind of archive that draws ah our attention to kind of like
00:31:41
Speaker
The fight to survive and what we might need and how that might require not following the paths that we are told will make us safe or will make us happy. Finding our own paths, our own trails. I call them desire lines. Well, I didn't invent that term. I use the term desire lines in my book, Queer Phenomenology. which is a word from landscape architecture, the lines in the ground where people are not following the official routes, these alternative trails, alternative routes. They might be fainter, but they're also more direct. And they also could be where we find each other. So that picks up a little bit on this idea of finding each other in these in these paths, in these sort of messy places.
00:32:26
Speaker
Side point, but I think of that every time I go off a trail. Whenever I go off a trail, I think of that book and I'm like, oh, but we're we're like remaking this path and and going the route that's like quickest, but isn't for me.
00:32:38
Speaker
I'm like, should we go that way? I'm like, no, we should go that way. Like, let you know, it's always in my brain. And there's a term then in that next paragraph, right? And so, comma, we address each other.
00:32:49
Speaker
there's a kind of sense of like when you're talking in this book, like there are different kinds of registers. Sometimes you're talking like to particular people or in particular contexts. And there's this moment where it kind of like almost expands almost, right? You're kind of like pulling us in to that address, little ghosts, little birds, a complaint graveyard, a queer nest.
00:33:07
Speaker
which are all kind of the images that you're describing you've picked up through the book, right? You're gathering along the way to make a nest possible, to make it possible to nest, we have to stop what usually happens happening.
00:33:18
Speaker
You feel this kind of gathering of the book. The book seems to be gathering in the way that you're describing and kind of drawing these lines of connection and disconnection as well. um i just think it's a really interesting kind of linguistic turn that, and so we address each other. There's this, that we're part of this book now.
00:33:36
Speaker
Oh, ah I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that because I want to think of the person who is reading this book as somebody who might themselves have had a hard time because of complaints you've made, because you've encountered the very thing you're complaining about when you complain. because you don't feel that you've been given room to do the work you need to do or to be the person that you are. Like, I know that the material is really hard and heavy.
00:34:02
Speaker
So it was really important to me when I think of the person who is reading, the listener or the reader, as someone who has to take care of themselves to enter this space. has to look after themselves because it's it's hard sometimes to be in proximity to what makes it hard. And um so we address each other is also sort of picking up one of the ah arguments from the chapter before, which is on complaints as activism, which is that, you know, when you follow a formal complaint process, you are, you know as it were, um having to use the institution's language. And the students that I worked with when I was involved in a complaint process at my former employer, the students that I supported write about this. Lila Whitley, Tiffany Page, Alice Corbel and others write about how in order to get their complaint through, it had to not sound like them.
00:34:56
Speaker
And there's a way in which I was trying to differentiate them between the complaints that we make and those that we have. and to say that in a way it can feel like when you're directed to make a formal complaint, you are directed not just to use the institution's language, but to enter into a process that's designed to say keep the institution safe and to protect those who are already valued um by the institution.
00:35:26
Speaker
One of the arguments in the chapter on activism is that a lot of the activism around complaint is changing the addressee. So you're no longer um going through a complaint process or maybe not just going through a complaint process in which you're required to address the institution. So the institution that might be the object of your complaint is also its recipient.
00:35:46
Speaker
But actually instead you address the complaint to each other. So I i use examples where people write each of their postcards or letters or turn complaints into songs or perform complaints you know, and thinking about each other as being the person who receives the note so that we then do become an assembly. So that kind of like the address to actually, in in a sense of the the person we're addressing the letter to or the institution we're addressing the letter to or whoever we're addressing the letter to. I'm trying to pick up in that.
00:36:17
Speaker
And so we address each other, that kind of shift. The addressee is each other following on from Lord and Gums. It's important that that that answer we address each other follows on because I'm sort of also recognising it's an ode to those who've come before us, who've who've made it possible for us to be here, to to do this work. So addressing each other is also addressing those of us, those who made the work possible, those who are behind us.
00:36:46
Speaker
There's a lot going on in that sentence actually. Yeah. yeah And I, the, we have to stop what usually happens happening. I feel like, it you know, is a key thread of like so many of your books, right? That like what usually happens keeps happening because it keeps happening, right? Like this, this kind of this circle of, of that logic that, know, as long as things continue the way they are, they will continue the way they are. And it's the interruption of that. It's the kind of the rejection of, that again, that is a different kind of habituation, right? Of that things just stay static in the way because everyone's like, well, that's how it's always been. And to question it would seem to be like odd or problematic or, you know, why would you want to stop things from happening they always have? And I think that interruption is like one of the key insights of like your work, but I just love the sentence, what usually happens happening
00:37:35
Speaker
which, yeah you know, kind of sounds grammatically kind of weird, but it does the it does the work of showing you that actually that needs interrupting. Yeah. if that make No, that that expresses exactly what I intended, what usually happens happening. And, and um you know, thinking about the birds as our teachers, again, you know, what's important there is that if the post spots were still used in the way that it was intended, the birds would be displaced.
00:38:02
Speaker
There's no action necessary to displace the birds other than doing what you usually do. the displacement is a consequence of how the postbox would be occupied. That's all it takes to do what you usually do.
00:38:15
Speaker
And that is actually what we could say about a lot of institutional politics and how institutions get reproduced. They don't have to deliberately exclude some people. They just have to select people in the way that they usually select people because they define excellence or merit or quality or what they want around who is already here.
00:38:36
Speaker
They don't have to target anybody to make some people the object of suspicion. They just have to organise the institution in the way it has already been done.
00:38:47
Speaker
And I think that's actually quite important. um It's still work to reproduce the institution as it gets reproduced, but it's not kind of a worth quite an additional
Institutional Hierarchies and Reproduction
00:38:56
Speaker
work. And that's also important because when I'm sort of talking about the the the politics of this, the work of I'm doing on complaint, what I'm not trying to say is that there's a problem with how institutions handle complaints, although I am saying that. But that's not really the point.
00:39:11
Speaker
The problem that I'm getting at is actually not about, not something that's going to be resolved by having better complaints procedures or new policies. It's something to do with the reproductive mechanisms themselves, like how institutions get understood as being for certain people and and And which people are understood as therefore stronger or more valuable or or or a word that appears throughout the book more important.
00:39:35
Speaker
Because in fact, one of the people in my book, Andrew, is a pseudony pseudonym. When she was considering making a complaint about harassment harassment and bullying, she was told, Be careful. He's an important man.
00:39:47
Speaker
if Important. She was being told not to do that, not to go there because he could do that. He could stop her. He would stop her in the warning not to complain is also a threat. so So we're really, you know, coming up against decisions that have already been made about who is more important.
00:40:07
Speaker
And you're being told perhaps that if you were to complain about somebody who isn't important, that you are not, you are not important. And that to complain would then shut the door on your own career. And then that's that's the sort of function of many of these warnings. I think it's worth pointing out of before, like I say, um to make a nest possible. so I'm sort of evoking again that the little birds that they're doing a lot of work on my behalf thank you birds but also the other is little ghosts and you know um viola used the image of the little bird scratching away at something and another person who i communicated with in writing shared the image of her complaint going to a complaint graveyard and you know i think she was sort of evoking in a way the filing cabinet so the filing cabinet that gray silvery piece of furniture that we're familiar with becomes the place that complaints go to die.
00:40:58
Speaker
and I remember sharing this image of the complaint graveyard with Anne, who appears, um that's a pseudonym, appears throughout the book, and she made a complaint about bullying that was actually a collective complaint and had to leave.
00:41:10
Speaker
And i mentioned the complaint graveyard to her and she said something like, oh, they want us to be these little ghosts, little lonely ghosts on our own, but we need to be in common graveyards. We need the graveyard to be bigger.
00:41:21
Speaker
So when you think of the image of ah of a complaint unknown, ending up in the complaint graveyard, going there to die, it is an image perhaps of the end, of death, of of there being no possibility, no possibility of nesting, of life, of new life.
00:41:35
Speaker
But she was sort of implying that, you know, the more no's you are, the more no's end up in this place, this this is this burial ground. the more you are, the more life there is. And in a way, the complaint graveyard, the little little the little bird, I began to hear the connection between the little bird and the little ghost. And this sort of quite deadly image with this quite life creating image, nesting, dying together.
00:42:02
Speaker
ah complaint graveyard, a queer nest. So that that again is partly about like having the voices of these different people I spoke to and the different images becoming are echoes of each other and building up to create this collective, this collective belly, a collective not as it's traditionally understood, ah a group of people coming together to act in concert, but a kind of a pile of different hopes and aspirations and refusals or somehow finding themselves up in a similar place so that they can be heard together, so that they can create something from what appears to be just meeting walls and doors that stop you. And that there's there's something very affirming, I think, in hearing the ghost and the bird ah together.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah. and and And bringing them into their own kind of dialogue, right? Because again, that's a different kind of hearing that, you know, you could easily, I've read books where like each chapter might have like an image, right? That it coalesces around and then you move on to the next one. But I think you're telling something about like, now that I've heard that image or now that I have that figure, that's now coming with me and us, right? On on the journey that suddenly shines light on this other image that I'm going to show you. That to me is the kind of the paying attention that yeah None of these things are in isolation. I think that's quite a beautiful formalisation of what you're also talking about ethically as well. right
00:43:23
Speaker
And we you end in that little bit in the bit that we've quoted. We end up with so many materials. What a mess. Which I love is just like that little a little sentence. It's just so colloquial. Right. Like what a mess. like fucking Yeah, what a mess.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yes, that mess can be a picture of our complaints, a picture of our lives. That mess can also be a queer map telling us where we have been, comings and goings. And like a little bit below that on the page, you have like a drawing right of this of this squiggle, this this map and that you describe as a queer map.
00:43:51
Speaker
And I think it's also worth saying that you often do have like images in your books too, right? like there are These aren't just like kind of literary figurations, but you also like show them to us too. And I think that's such a, it's really interesting just to have that kind of like squiggly map at the bottom of that page as as both as you say like a kind of description of something but also like a way of visualizing possibility right that that map is it's it's queer it's different it's where we've been our comings and goings like it's not linear right it's not straightforward it's not teleological i just think it's interesting to change what a mess to like what a mess like yeah that that is the nature of our lives right that is the nature of our work and that's something to kind of hold on to
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely seeing in in in mess a kind of like possibility, like all of those lines, you know, is where you will end up. But, you know, thinking about kind of the visual images, i i remember exactly when i began to use images in that way. And it was, um it was, interestingly, um when I was doing the diversity research. So, you know, I am literally trained, but I ended up doing social science projects, one on diversity, and then the one that this book is informed by more, more the one on complaint. And when I was doing the project on diversity, I was basically talking to diversity practitioners about how they use the word diversity. So it began as a following the word diversity around project, but it kind of changed everything because I was talking to practitioners who had been appointed by institutions to, you know, institutionalise their commitment to the diversity, but who would often describe the institution as a wall. So one practitioner said, it's a banging your head against the brick wall job. So when the wall keeps its place, it's you that gets saw. And so one time I was trying to to sort of think about, you know, what it felt like to do diversity work, to keep coming up against the walls that don't appear unless you're trying to change the institution, because it might look like the institution is as happy as its diversity policy, you know, as open and happy as its diversity policy. So you're coming up against something, you're being stopped by the very institution that has appointed you to change it. Like there's something about that labour, what it feels like that I really wanted to capture. And I ah just, i don't know exactly how this happened, but I like i was doing my PowerPoint and I just went and I went to Google Images um and picked out a picture of it a brick wall and put on the PowerPoint and then put above it a job description.
00:46:15
Speaker
And I remember sharing this PowerPoint and sharing that image and the reaction of the audience was just like, ah ah yeah, there's something about seeing that wall. And then with the caption job description that really captured it in a way that i probably wouldn't have been able to convey if I was representing it to to the audience through words. so And then when I did the project on uses of use,
00:46:40
Speaker
I began to expand the range of different walls. So the scratched wall appears um and the way in which scratching on the wall then became testimony or writing on the wall and different images of use. I mentioned the birds using the postbox as a nest, but ah a used up piece of toothpaste.
00:46:58
Speaker
a broken cup, you know, all these images were up with me on the PowerPoint and and they captured something. learned a lot about communication, that the visual images worked in that way. So when I was doing this, um actually, when I was doing the first book on complaint, which is more of an academic monograph, Complaint Exclamation Point, which is another thing that I'm really interested in is punctuation and exclamation points. If you use them too much, they cease to function as exclamations, which is really interesting to me. But the exclamation point in the book complaint captures something about the intensity of the work. But when I was writing that book, I began sharing this idea that the complaint procedure is often represented as a flowchart, you know, straight lines, clear lines, arrows, it all looks very straightforward. And I began to think of that representation
00:47:47
Speaker
of the complaints procedure as the institution's story of complaint. It's what's supposed to happen. It isn't what happens. And for the complainer, well, I began to think, well, what would a complaint look like from the complainer's point of view? And I actually was sitting at my desk, not the one I'm sitting at now, but the one next to me. And I just started drawing it.
00:48:06
Speaker
This mess of lines. I'm like, this is what a complaint looks like. And then I thought, well, you know, why don't I try that? See how people respond to that. And I use that on a PowerPoint and people like, yeah. And then I was looking at that mess of lines and I was thinking, you know, That can be a picture of a complaint.
00:48:21
Speaker
If you're making a complaint and you're in a precarious situation, I'm thinking of the people who talked to me who are international students, for example, one student made a complaint while her visa was running out. And when her complaint took too long, because often complaints take longer than they're supposed to in accordance with procedures, everything in her life began to unravel. She she no longer knew she could whether she could stay or not, whether she could have residence or not. And so it's not just the complaint that's messy, it's your life that's messy. So I have in this book a picture of these messy lines as a picture of a complaint and a picture of life, and then coming back to it as a queer map.
00:48:58
Speaker
Because all those lines can be like the places that you had to go. Maybe you had to speak to someone in commal human resources. Maybe you had to speak to someone in occupational health. Maybe you spoke to your head department. Maybe you spoke to a colleague, another administrator. This There's so many different conversations that you have to have and you're often talking to people who aren't talking to each other. You know, each line could be one of those conversations, one the conversations that you had to have. but So what are then if we think of each line? Okay, it's labour and the work can be heavy and slow, but each line is also a lead.
00:49:31
Speaker
It's how you find out stuff, how you might find out about complaints that happened before. And I actually began to think about queer maps and that tell us where to go to find queer people. We know what queer maps are for.
00:49:43
Speaker
But they can also be ways of doing history, telling us about our comings and goings. So all those conversations that you had to have, they might have taken time, they might take energy. You might think of it as draining, paining, if that's a word it should be. and then But then there was it's also like how you find other people.
00:50:02
Speaker
and and that's that for me was my experience of complaint. Even though the complaint was not mine, it was the students where i used to work. It was how I connected with those students. They became my complaint collective. So all of that labour, that mess, is also lead.
00:50:17
Speaker
How we get led to others who also said no to the institution, no to the world, that they're in that had made decisions about them or conveyed decisions to them that were unsustainable or unlivable. And um it kind of really helped me to think then of that mess as not just about what gets taken from us, but what we acquire, what we what we are given, what the Labour gives us in terms of solidarity or or the clarification of the point or the politics of doing that work.
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's just such a a striking thing. And it's making me think this is like maybe a nice transition into asking you about your writing practice. But the idea of you, you've said a few times, like kind of in doing a kind of talk or like a public lecture or something that like something happened in that room then fed back into the writing, right? Like this real, not just like, not like a testing of ideas, but almost like, oh, that had resonance.
00:51:13
Speaker
How can I like use that now in in the writing? Or how can I bring that sentence in? that was spoken but now it's like written i think that's such like an interesting part of the writing practice that maybe people don't talk about but I wonder if you could tell us a little bit like how you write I i love asking this question to you writers because everyone gives me very different responses like if you have a writing practice if you've always had the same one do you sit at the same desk are you typing is there coffee or chocolate or you know like like what is your what is your set Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really good question.
Sarah Ahmed's Writing Routine and Influences
00:51:44
Speaker
i also really like talking about the practice of writing, like actually what you do. um And, you know, writing for me is, this is funny from the point of view being a killjoy, is quite and quite quite un quite a happy place. It's like i having the time and the space to do my writing is really, really important to me. And I'm actually a very structured person and I like routine. So I always tend to write pretty much the same time in the mornings. I always have coffee at the beginning. I'm always on the same um table desk ah with a PC with a big keyboard.
00:52:16
Speaker
I always look out the same window. Well, ever since I've lived here, which has been quite a while now, some sort of when I'm pondering and thinking, I'm kind of looking at the same tree over there, which has become a very familiar experience. loved thing in my horizon. And so that that there is something about like having a lot of routine and the rhythm of the writing and having kind of like things be the same around me. But I, you know, i for me, like writing and speaking, they they they are on a continuum. And i when I wrote Queer Phenomenology, for some reason,
00:52:50
Speaker
I think it was to do with the table, you know, noticing tables. It was really about beginning to think about what's in the work, the the materials, how we put together our arguments. So I'm really fascinated by examples, like how do people exemplify or illustrate their arguments and that that can be true in fiction and non-fiction what are the things that are in the in the work itself and what histories do they have so for some reason when I was starting to get obsessed with tables that has become a lifelong obsession since i I I spoke that book I spoke about tables into a tape recorder I still got the tape actually i haven't listened to it for a long time ah um And because before queer phonology, I don't think I really thought about myself as being a writer in the same way. i think I was a researcher and I was really interested in concepts and words and making... um sense of the world.
00:53:45
Speaker
I was really interested in that, actually, making sense, I suppose, would be how I would describe it. It was queer phonology that made me think much more of myself as actually being a writer. And interestingly, that was from speaking. was from speaking the words. And I think that really made me very aware of sound, how a sound, how the sentence sounds, the sound of a sentence really matters to me. and um And so whenever I write something, I also speak it So I will practice my lectures a lot, but I'm not, ah you know, i to myself, like that I read them out loud, like, um and I can hear things and um notice things from speaking it even to myself.
00:54:25
Speaker
And then when I'm speaking the work to audiences and I can hear, I can hear, it's not that you hear it land necessarily, but it's it's partly just about volume, just sound and reactions and, Actually, being in audiences and listening to audiences and when there is a sort of a sound of recognition has always mattered to to me and to the development my argument. The idea of feminist ears, for instance, yeah instance came from being at a ah screening of the feminist film A Question of Silence at the London Film Festival in Hackney.
00:54:56
Speaker
And i heard this audience go, I was part of this audience, that just was this this roar of recognition at this one scene where a secretary who's at a table makes a point, a really good point, silence, no one responds. And then the man next to her makes the same point and everyone goes, what a great point.
00:55:13
Speaker
And people could hear how sexism worked and we heard it together. And in hearing it together, there was this roar of recognition. And that's when I first thought of Feminist Ears was like, actually, you know what?
00:55:25
Speaker
We're louder when we hear together, not just when we're heard together. So actually for me, like writing is is a kind of, it is all about communication. finding words and the forms to express something that is very difficult to express and sending it out.
00:55:44
Speaker
So that's why I think of speaking and writing and sound as being very much part of the same project. Yeah. and And when a writer sounds, you know when you can hear the writer in the work, like I always valued that, right? Like, you know, there there are some people, I guess, or maybe in academic training anyway, it's like trying to remove yourself, right? Try and be distant or objective or some kind of nonsensical idea, right? of Just like removing any someone's view versus hearing the person in the work and how how they've come to the ideas too, right? As you say, showing your workings or describing the trail of how you got there, which i think is so valuable, right? I always read someone's like acknowledgements or a preface, right? Because I feel like that's the only place where they say, by the way, this is where the book came from, right? Like I had this conversation with this person or like I had this little idea.
00:56:27
Speaker
So i think that's really fascinating. And as a morning writer, like i i I don't feel the same. I can't write in the morning. My brain doesn't work. I'm like a morning yeah i'm like a morning reader, I think. Like in the morning, I want to absorb other people. And then as the day progresses, I can maybe maybe put some words down. no Yeah.
00:56:45
Speaker
start up with all these start off with lots of light energy and and and and clarity and then gradually things get – things slow down. um In the afternoon, I will just i tend to – I mean, i so I might still do bit editing. I love editing. I love going over chapters and sentences. It's probably my favourite part. um I still find the first, like, the beginning of a piece painful, just because the first words, it's hard to get them out. And I sometimes will even put off, like I'll do something else, rather than get the first words out. But once I have the words, just some words, even like a paragraph, I'm just like, oh, I can go back to it. And I can start by just working it over and working it over. And I love that. I often think about it as a little bit like just moving the furniture around in a room. you know, you just have to move that chair just that little bit over one way or or that table just a little bit and the whole room feels different. And I love that. I love the way in which you can kind of rearrange the furniture by by moving words around. And um yeah, so but you do I really love editing. It's something that that I probably shouldn't say more. I think the editing process is like just staying with the words and just working it over working it over and working it over.
00:58:00
Speaker
at giving it time I suppose it takes time to do that and I change fonts a lot I have a favorite font but I change fonts a lot so if i if I feel a bit like I'm beginning to get a bit I don't know not sure unclear something's unclear to me what I'm actually trying to say I will typically just change the font so it just looks different and it comes at you differently and that that really helps and sometimes I I go between double spacing and single spacing. It has a similar um role in my yeah um and enabling me to see it something a little bit differently.
00:58:31
Speaker
Just seeing it differently. Yeah. I recommend that students all the time and I never know if they take me up on it, but it it seems so sensible. Although, so you are you editing on screen or do you ever print out and kind of scribble?
00:58:43
Speaker
on On screen, definitely. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. and If I'm writing a new chapter, like I'm at the moment, I'm writing um a book on common sense and um I've just gone into the the second part of the book, which is more on, was on the work of the ah sociologist, Harold Garfinkel little bit and ethno methodology and the chapter's got very boring, tired of society. Yeah. So I've just begun working on that. But I keep finding that I'm actually on the introduction and I'm on the first part of the book because I've been working over that. So it takes me a while to shift my attention to a new piece. And I've learned to give myself a little bit of time, like let myself go back to the what I was doing before. i I do find it quite hard shifting from one piece of writing to another. Like I want to keep going back to the one I was doing before. So yeah. I sort like, I take a little bit of time before i move my attention and and and then i'm um I'm on that piece. And then the same thing happens and the next time, the the next chapter or the next project.
00:59:41
Speaker
Yeah. But that kind of back and forth is so emblematic of your writing, right? You can almost see that on the page, this kind of like returning to those older ideas and then bringing them forward again. So that definitely makes sense. You also said you have a favourite font. I know this is not the most important question, but what what is your favourite font? Well, it used to be Garamond, but now it's Kandara.
00:59:59
Speaker
Okay. These the things that important to me in life. And sometimes I make it really small, like the whole document, and sometimes I make it really big. I mean, I have no idea what that's about. But at the moment, yeah, I've shifted a little bit to Kundara. And I keep, I imagine thinking, like, maybe I need a new font.
01:00:14
Speaker
but And i I often go through them and I try the fonts and they'll last for like 10 minutes and then I'll go back to the one that used to. But no but like it makes sense. like If you're staring at something like all day, every day, right like it needs to do something in your brain, in your eye.
01:00:30
Speaker
No, I'm always interested in that. I ask people about what pens they use and all the rest of it. so um I don't write write down very much and I get really sore hats or hands as well from writing too much, which is interesting. But I used to i used to write, I've got lots of, um this is it from the Common Sense, because there are lots of these sort of notebooks that For my older projects, I used to do all handwritten notes, really, really close notes from from text but now because so many um of the older books you can are pdf'd and you can cut and paste it all of my documents all my kind of like archive for my common sense project is virtual i don't really have i've got some notes but it doesn't really make sense to to write things out by hand and then to type them out and also i'm really good at introducing mistakes it's really good i'm so good at mistakes i'm terrible mistakes but it's almost good at mistakes because i'm so terrible at them I kind of like, so so I've actually gone almost entirely virtual, nothing nothing handwritten how hardly at all, which is a bit of a shame because I do i do think like handwriting, like it it's, it's really a way of getting things into your brain in a certain kind of way. But I did know because I did break my wrist in August, so I was finding it very, very hard to type. And so I i did try doing um some audio recording, like it's just using the basic program that you can you can use on your Word document. And I realised that actually i think with my hands, and maybe we all do, I'm so used to writing it down using my my um keyboard. that I couldn't do it. I couldn't actually speak.
01:02:03
Speaker
I mean, I could i could i could do a letter like that, a letter to a colleague, but I couldn't do the actual writing that i do that way. So I think we do get very, very used to sort of thinking thinking with our hands and thinking with the the tools and technologies that we use. They're really part of we think. Yeah.
Recommended Readings and Podcast Closure
01:02:21
Speaker
yeah it's so some yeah there's there's a somatic thing you know it's again the habituation right the way that we think and the way that those things yeah connecteded I don't know all this is fascinating to me okay let me ask you finally i think I know what you might recommend but like I want to know what books you will recommend to listeners what they should go get immediately yeah you know I i was very lucky to be a a teacher a university for pretty much I think it was 22 or 23 years before I left and I always talk with Audre Lorde every year and she is my recommendation for the work that she has done, the poetry as well as the nonfiction. And when when I first read Lorde, it helped me to realise that theory can do more when it's closer to the skin, the way she writes from her own experience, the way she's always willing to to name herself, to identify herself, to give names to problems, to give problems their names. I mean, it really was revolutionary for me finding Lord. So if you, probably many of you who are listening know Lord well, well, I find that if you go and reread Lord, any text,
01:03:28
Speaker
First of Light, Cancer Journal, Sister Outsider, Black Unicorn, whichever text, you read it tonight, let's let's let's say you read it tonight, you'll hear and it something different in it, you'll find something different in it. It's kind of like Lord is my companion, um especially when, you know, it's a very hostile environment right now for many of us and people are finding it really, really hard to to get by and to make do. So,
01:03:52
Speaker
work like lords is a lifeline you know it helps to pull us out of difficult experiences so that would be my lifelong recommendation a wonderful recommendation is too and yeah i agree massively sara thank you so much for your time i really appreciate appreciate you as ever and i appreciate your brain for all it's done in my brain oh Oh, we think together. that's That's a beautiful thing. We think together and we write together and we read together. And that's what close reading is also about, I guess.
01:04:22
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube and share with people on socials. Follow the show and me on Instagram at booksupclose. Tag me in any posts of the episodes that you like. And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form that is linked in the show notes.
01:04:46
Speaker
I'll send you some Books Up Close merch if you do and then send me a message. You can also get show, transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.