Living a Feminist Life SARA AHMED Living a Feminist Life Duke University Press / Durham and London / 2017 © 2017 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Designed by Heather Hensley Typeset in Arno Pro by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ahmed, Sara, [date] author. Title: Living a feminist life / Sara Ahmed. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2017. Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016032264 (print) LCCN 2016033775 (ebook) ISBN 9780822363040 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 9780822363194 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 9780822373377 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Feminist theory. | Feminism. Classification: LCC HQ1190.a36 2017 (print) | LCC HQ1190 (ebook) | DDC 305.4201—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032264 Carrie Moyer, Chromafesto (Sister Resister 1.2), 2003, acrylic, glitter on canvas, 36 x 24 inches. © Carrie Moyer. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York. To the many feminist killjoys out there doing your thing: THIS ONE IS FOR YOU. CONTENTS Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION Bringing Feminist Theory Home PART I BECOMING FEMINIST 1. Feminism Is Sensational 2. On Being Directed 3. Willfulness and Feminist Subjectivity PART II DIVERSITY WORK 4. Trying to Transform 5. Being in Question 6. Brick Walls PART III LIVING THE CONSEQUENCES 7. Fragile Connections 8. Feminist Snap 9. Lesbian Feminism CONCLUSION 1 A Killjoy Survival Kit CONCLUSION 2 A Killjoy Manifesto Notes References Index ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is the first time I have written a book alongside a blog. Thank you so much to those who encouraged me to start my blog, especially my feminist friends on Facebook. Thanks also to those with whom I have engaged on social media since. I have learned so much. Thanks to Mulka and Poppy for your furry brown companionship, then and now. Thanks to Leona Lewis for your voice and inspiration. My special thanks to my partner in feminist crime, Sarah Franklin. My appreciation to Duke University Press for working with me again, and to Ken Wissoker and Elizabeth Ault for sustaining your enthusiasm for this project throughout, as well as to Liz Smith for her patience at the late stages. To my feminist colleagues at Goldsmiths and beyond, I appreciate the care and connection, whether from near or afar, especially Rumana Begum, Sirma Bilge, Lisa Blackman, Ulrika Dahl, Natalie Fenton, Yasmin Gunaratnam, Heidi Mirza, Fiona Nicoll, Nirmal Puwar, Beverley Skeggs, Elaine Swan, and Isabel Waidner. To those who have participated in the Centre for Feminist Research and the Feminist Postgraduate Forum, thanks for working to make work a better and safer place, especially Tiffany Page and Leila Whitley. During the copyediting of this book, I made the difficult decision to resign from my post at Goldsmiths after three years of working with others to challenge how sexual harassment has become normalized in academic culture. I have been overwhelmed by the feminist solidarity and support I have received. Each message brought a message home to me, one I have been trying to write about in this book: living a feminist life is about how we connect with and draw upon each other in our shared project of dismantling worlds. We are chipping away, slowly, but we are chipping away! INTRODUCTION Bringing Feminist Theory Home What do you hear when you hear the word feminism? It is a word that fills me with hope, with energy. It brings to mind loud acts of refusal and rebellion as well as the quiet ways we might have of not holding on to things that diminish us. It brings to mind women who have stood up, spoken back, risked lives, homes, relationships in the struggle for more bearable worlds. It brings to mind books written, tattered and worn, books that gave words to something, a feeling, a sense of an injustice, books that, in giving us words, gave us the strength to go on. Feminism: how we pick each other up. So much history in a word; so much it too has picked up. I write this book as a way of holding on to the promise of that word, to think what it means to live your life by claiming that word as your own: being a feminist, becoming a feminist, speaking as a feminist. Living a feminist life does not mean adopting a set of ideals or norms of conduct, although it might mean asking ethical questions about how to live better in an unjust and unequal world (in a not-feminist and antifeminist world); how to create relationships with others that are more equal; how to find ways to support those who are not supported or are less supported by social systems; how to keep coming up against histories that have become concrete, histories that have become as solid as walls. It is worth noticing from the outset that the idea that feminism is about how to live, about a way of thinking how to live, has often been understood as part of feminist history, as dated, associated with the moralizing or even policing stance of what might be called or might have been called, usually dismissively, cultural feminism. I will return to the politics of this dismissal in chapter 9. I am not suggesting here that this version of feminism as moral police, the kind of feminism that might proceed by declaring this or that practice (and thus this or that person) as being unfeminist or not feminist, is simply a fabrication. I have