My life in books

Sara Ahmed begins her book, Living a Feminist Life, with these words:

"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."

This is not unlike my own sense of what feminism has meant to me, throughout almost an entire lifetime of consciously identifying myself as a feminist. It is about living bravely and ethically, believing in the power we have within us to change the world and make it a better place for everyone to live in. It is about social and economic justice for every damned human being on the planet. It is about fighting sexism, racism, classism, homophobia and transphobia. It is about recognising intersectionality of experience and not centering the experiences of the privileged. It's about challenging capitalist greed, the bitter aftereffects of colonialism, the ongoing oppression of globalisation and economic imperialism. It's about respect and compassion and love. And yet, as Ahmed notes:

"When you become a feminist, you find out very quickly: what you aim to bring to an end some do not recognize as existing. This book follows this finding. So much feminist and antiracist work is the work of trying to convince others that sexism and racism have not ended; that sexism and racism are fundamental to the injustices of late capitalism; that they matter. Just to talk about sexism and racism here and now is to refuse displacement; it is to refuse to wrap your speech around postfeminism or postrace, which would require you to use the past tense (back then) or an elsewhere (over there)."

Ahmed writes with such specificity about becoming a feminist, being a feminist, behaving in feminist ways, that every page is full of recognitions - “yes, that’s what it feels like,” “yes, that’s what always happens,” “yes, I’ve been there, said that, done that.” She talks about being the ‘feminist killjoy’ - the one who recognises the everyday manifestations of sexism and racism, who identifies them as problems, as wrong, as forms of violence, who has a name for these things, who feels angry about them, who speaks out, who takes action to resist the wrong, repudiate the violence, repair the harm. And about feminism as willfulness: “If to be a killjoy is to be the one who gets in the way of happiness, then living a feminist life requires being willing to get in the way. When we are willing to get in the way, we are willful.”

A further aspect of Ahmed’s writing is her multi-layered examination of the words and images we use, and how their meanings and relationships can reveal unexpected truths. As in this passage:

“If feminists are willful women, then feminism is judged as a product of those who have too much will or too much of a will of their own. This judgment is a judgment of feminism as being wrong, but also an explanation of feminism in terms of motivation: the act of saying something is wrong is understood as being self-motivated, a way of getting what you want or will. Virginia Woolf wrote of a room of one’s own, a room we have to fight for. We can think of feminism as having to fight to acquire a will of one’s own.

Of course now when we hear the expression “a will of one’s own,” we might assume this claim as an assertion of the primacy of an individual. But own can be rebellious in a world that assumes some beings are property for others (being for others): to claim to be one’s own or to have a will of one’s own can be a refusal to be willing to labor or to provide services for others. Perhaps willing women means being willing to be for. When you are assumed to be for others, then not being for others is judged as being for yourself. Perhaps willfulness could be summarized thus: not being willing to be owned. When you are not willing to be owned, you are judged as willing on your own. This is why willfulness as a judgment falls on some and not others. It is only for some that ownness is rebellion; only some owns become wrongs.”

Ahmed devotes a significant portion of the text to discussing her experiences and observations on being a diversity worker in academia - an example of praxis of the feminist theory she expounds elsewhere in the text. But much of the thinking she shares about the work of enabling and supporting diversity, and the multiple barriers faced by such workers, is entirely applicable to the struggles of any activist to enable and support social and economic justice for any marginalised group.

Indeed, the final section of the book is about feminist activism of all kinds and the consequences of living a feminist life. Ahmed demonstrates the ways that the various concepts she identifies and explores - the feminist killjoy, the willful woman, the feminist snap among others - work in the real world of interactions between people with multiple intersections of privilege and oppression. Moreover, she stresses the importance of surviving as a feminist, and of ensuring that feminism survives. And she gives us much to think about while we try to survive and live our feminist lives.

“Feminism needs feminists to survive: my killjoy survival kit is assembled around this sentence. It is a feminist sentence. And the reverse too is very true: feminists need feminism to survive. Feminism needs those of us who live lives as feminists to survive; our life becomes a feminist survival. But feminism needs to survive; our life becomes a feminist survival in this other sense. Feminism needs us; feminism needs us not only to survive but to dedicate our lives to the survival of feminism. This book has been my expression of my willingness to make this dedication. Feminists need feminism to survive.”