In this special lecture, Sara Ahmed reflects on what it means to give “a feminist ear” to complaint. Marking the publication of her new book No is Not a Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining (2025), and coinciding with Autumn Knight’s exhibition I Can't Complain, Ahmed considers how complaint can bring us together, enabling new solidarities and alliances in the struggle for change.
In 2013, Ahmed sat down with students who had made a collective complaint about sexual harassment. After resigning from her academic post in protest at her university’s failure to address sexual harassment, she began, in 2016, interviewing students and academics who had complained about discrimination and harassment in universities. Their experiences became the basis of her 2021 book Complaint!.