Sara Ahmed is a feminist writer, scholar, and activist whose research explores how bodies and worlds take shape. She investigates the dynamics of power, examining how it is secured and challenged within everyday life and institutional cultures. Ahmed delves into the intersection of our experiences of the world and our identities with prevailing power structures. Her work prompts readers to consider how we can actively challenge and transform unjust systems.
'Not only a dazzling analysis of the workings of sexism, but a balm for the soul. It will teach you how to survive and how to transform the world' Hannah DawsonWe have to keep saying it because they keep doing it.Do colleagues roll their eyes in a meeting when you use words like sexism or racism? Do you refuse to laugh at jokes that aren't fun[Bokinfo].
Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power.
Continuing the work she began in The Promise of Happiness and Willful Subjects by taking up a single word and following its historical, intellectual, and political significance, Sara Ahmed explores how use operates as an organizing concept, technology of control, and tool for diversity work.
Showing how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist, Sara Ahmed highlights the ties between feminist theory and living a life that sustains it by building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship and discussing the figure of the feminist killjoy.
Cultural theorist Sara Ahmed explores how willfulness is often a charge made by some against others. By following the figure of the willful subject, who wills wrongly or wills too much, Ahmed suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from attempts at its elimination.
Emotions work to define who we are as well as shape what we do and this is no more powerfully at play than in the world of politics. The author considers how emotions keep us invested in relationships of power, and also shows how this use of emotion could be crucial to feminist and queer political movements.
Ahmed argues that a commitment to diversity is frequently substituted for a commitment to actual change. She traces the work that diversity does, examining how the term is used and the way it serves to make questions about racism seem impertinent. Her study is based in universities and her research is primarily in the UK and Australia, but the argument is equally valid in North America and beyond.
This provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy draws on the work of feminist, black, and queer critics showing how happiness is used to justify social oppression.
Cultural theorist Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use by analyzing what it means for bodies to be oriented in space and time.
Challenging conventional views on feminism and postmodernism, Sara Ahmed argues that feminism should critically engage with postmodernism rather than be defined by it. She emphasizes the importance of feminist theorists "speaking back" to postmodern ideas, particularly in relation to rights, ethics, and identity. Through detailed analyses, Ahmed refuses to accept postmodernism as a universal framework, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of its implications on feminist discourse.