In 2016, Sara Ahmed left her position as professor of race and cultural studies in Goldsmiths, University of London, in protest at the institution’s refusal to tackle a culture of sexual harassment. Ahmed had spent the preceding years supporting a group of students in their efforts to address the problem.
Writing with perspectives of minoritised people – brown, female, junior, disabled, queer – Ahmed describes viscerally what it feels like to encounter barriers in life and work which are made invisible by institutions and structures. She draws on metaphors of walls and doors, hard physical objects that hamper progress at the same time as their existence is denied. “If you are stopped by a door, and the door is not perceived,” she says, “it can seem like you have stopped yourself.”
The Feminist Killjoy Handbook is Sara Ahmed’s 11th book, the first for a general audience. It is a deliberate intervention, written in direct and accessible prose, building and nurturing the community it addresses. Ahmed’s previous work as a cultural theorist explores how emotions structure our social and political worlds. This handbook engages fiercely with what it feels like to be excluded and offers strategies for working with those collective feelings.
The figure of the Feminist Killjoy appears as the antithesis of much of what passes for feminism these days. In place of vapid corporate so-called empowerment, we are invited to unite in the shared reactions that are often dismissed as negativity, over-sensitivity, humourlessness and bitterness. Ahmed names the shame and guilt that travel with these responses, exhorting the community of killjoys to embrace their critique and support one another.
Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+: 10 of the best new shows to watch in February
‘We didn’t want it to be bright or stand out’: How one couple built a bungalow in a Kerry front garden
Des Bishop: ‘I never felt the grief with my dad like I felt with my mother’
LA after the fires: Like driving through a post-nuclear suburbia. The scale of destruction is unfathomable
The rhetorical style of the book is direct and simple, poetic in places, which won’t be to everybody’s taste, but remember: this is an intervention, and words are tools. Ahmed moves towards the heat on controversial issues: transgender inclusion, white feminism, abolitionism and political blackness, among others. At times I felt these brief summaries needed more space to breathe. This is polemic, but deliberately so.
At a time when social change is urgently needed, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook provides sharp and usable tools for readers who have been made to feel isolated, insignificant and difficult. It is a generous offering from an important theorist, and highly recommended.
