Living a Feminist Life
In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique-often by naming and calling attention to problems-and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions-such as forming support systems-to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.
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Community Reviews
Truthfully, I should have given it 3 stars because it is the most repetitive book I’ve ever read. But I imagined reading a book half this length with all the repeat sentences removed. Here’s what I appreciated: the focus on the falsity of the idea of the feminist as the cause her own suffering. I’ve recently encountered the argument here on Goodreads, that feminists aren’t unhappy because of outside injustice but because they’ve pushed back on this injustice too much. Ahmed also explores the idea of how people label those who complain about these injustices as killjoys. That’s really familiar.
I liked the exploration of the often ineffective diversity initiatives at most workplaces. How the reports and measurements and self-congratulatory events can become the very tool of oppression by managers that do not at all understand the issues of diversity in the workplace.
I also liked the idea of a feminist survival kit. I am not sure what I’d put in mine, but I’m working on it.
I didn’t like the idea that she put forward of feminists (be the feminist women, men, trans, other races, disabled) constantly snapping at each other. It’s okay to discuss different experiences but it’s exhausting not to have allies that don’t also attack.
I liked the exploration of the often ineffective diversity initiatives at most workplaces. How the reports and measurements and self-congratulatory events can become the very tool of oppression by managers that do not at all understand the issues of diversity in the workplace.
I also liked the idea of a feminist survival kit. I am not sure what I’d put in mine, but I’m working on it.
I didn’t like the idea that she put forward of feminists (be the feminist women, men, trans, other races, disabled) constantly snapping at each other. It’s okay to discuss different experiences but it’s exhausting not to have allies that don’t also attack.
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