BOOK REVIEW 1

Review of Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed, Durham: Duke University Press, 2017

Alonso Peña
Undergraduate Student in American Ethnic Studies, Kansas State University

In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed develops powerful insight on what it means to live
feminism as an embodied praxis. For Ahmed, living a feminist life requires “asking ethical
questions,” about how we live, how we relate, how we care, and, “how to keep coming up
against histories that have become concrete, histories that have become as solid as walls,” (1).
Ahmed explores some of these questions in three parts; Living a Feminist Life, Diversity Work,
and Living the Consequences. The figure of the feminist killjoy, a subject of many of Ahmed’s
previous writings, is central to the questions about feminist “being” that Ahmed engages.
Therefore, the feminist killjoy makes many appearances throughout Living a Feminist Life. The
feminist killjoy asserts herself when we live a feminist life because, as Ahmed writes, “It is not
simply that we first become feminist and later become killjoys. Rather, to become feminist is to
kill other people’s joy; to get in the way of other people’s investments,” (65). In this sense,
Ahmed argues that feminism is not always enjoyable, but instead it requires causing one’s own
unhappiness and the unhappiness of others as a refusal to submit to patriarchal and racial
violence. Therefore, Ahmed offers critical and practical insight into the experiences of feminist
ways of being.
In chapter 3, Willfulness and Feminist Subjectivity, Ahmed explains that feminist
subjectivity is perceived “as having too much will, or too much subjectivity, or just as being too
much,” (66). Existing becomes burdensome for someone whose existence is perceived as willful,
perceived as “too much.” The feminist killjoy does not shy away from that willfulness. In being
willful, feminist killjoys refuse silence, some have no other choice but to make themselves
audible (73). In Part II: Diversity Work, Ahmed argues that feminist being is necessary work,
because patriarchy and racism continually produce walls which prevent women and people of
color from happily existing as themselves. Ahmed explains, “Walls are how some bodies are not
encountered in the first place. Walls are how other bodies are stopped by an encounter,” (145).
For Ahmed, to come up against walls means to exist in a body that is stopped from existing, but
hitting walls can also teach lessons. Ahmed uses experiences of coming up against walls, with
specific attention to the walls presented by universities, to think of ways to work the system, to
live strategically, and to navigate hostile spaces (101).
In part III: Living the Consequences, Ahmed is vulnerable, honest, and relatable as she
engages the uncomfortable realities of feminism. To be a feminist provokes the constant threat of
bruising or even shattering relationships. Ahmed explains that when one speaks up as a feminist
knowing they are not the source of a problem, that “exposing a problem is posing a problem,”
therefore feminism can often be, “exposing a problem as posing a problem for yourself,” 172).
Ahmed recognizes that sometimes the feminist killjoy feels like too much, or like she might cost
you too much (172). However, Ahmed focuses on fragility’s strength by explaining that
sometimes walls need to be shattered, as do relationships which crate those walls; feminism is to
live with fragility and to move through it, rather than eliminate it (186). Commented [AP1]: Out of no where
Ahmed concludes by recognizes that when one’s existence is viewed as a problem, “you
have to come up with your own systems for getting things through. You might even have to
come up with your own system for getting yourself through,” (231). Therefore, Ahmed
concludes by sharing A Killjoy Survival Kit and A Feminist Killjoy Manifesto. These two
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resources contain tools which hope to create transformation and survival as a “shared feminist
project” out of experiences coming up against walls and living a feminist life (236). Activists,
students, educators, diversity workers, and anyone else who has ever come up against a wall all
have knowledge, empowerment, and a good laugh to gain from reading Ahmed’s Living a
Feminist Life.
Sara Ahmed not only theorizes living a feminist life, but she also practices feminism
actively in her citational practices by refusing to cite white men and by instead centering “those
who have contributed to the intellectual genealogy of feminist and antiracism,” (15). Further,
Ahmed uses a variety of sources of evidence such as literature review, formal and informal
interviews, online interactions, and conversations with peers. Although Ahmed engaged feminist
of color scholarship to attend to power imbalances within citational practices, her brief
engagement of black scholars like Lewis Gordon and Franz Fanon was abrupt and did not do
justice to the depth and nuance of either Gordon or Fanon’s arguments. For examples, Ahmed
writes in relation to Fanon, “Black: not universal. Not universal: particular. Not white,
particular,” (134). The chain of equivalence between the categories of “non-white” and black
blurs the particularities of antiblack violence.

The purpose of the book:

Summary of the main themes of key points:

- Equal relations, “how to support those who are not supported or are less supported by
social systems”, concrete histories, walls

The expertise of the author: she speaks from experience as a “willful arm”, she speaks from her
experience as a feminist lesbian of color who has battled from within the university, someone
who is assumed to be a stranger, the daughter of a mixed race migrant family.

How well the book covers its topics and whether it breaks new ground: revolutionary
engagement with the idea of survival, and absolutely critical interventions into thoughts
surrounding self-care and individualism. Continues to sharpen the feminist killjoy toolkit.
In Chapter 1, Feminist is Sensational, Ahmed describes the experience of reading feminist
literature, “as like making friends,” but I would describe reading this feminist book as finding a
lesbian feminist aunt.

The authors viewpoint, methodology, or perspective

- Feminist of color, feminist killjoy, feminist manifesto, feminist survival kit

The appropriateness of the evidence of the topical scope of the book:

- Citational practices of refusing to cite white men and instead to center “those who have
contributed to the intellectual genealogy of feminism and antiracism,” 15. “Citation is a
feminist memory. Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before;
those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from
the path we were told to follow,” (15-16)
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- collective snap, affect and emotion, decolonial knowledge production.

- Use of experiences, including online interactions, personal experiences, formal and
informal interviews with others.
- Literature and canonical feminist and antiracist works including Gloria Anzaldua, bell
hooks, Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs
-

The intended audience: when describing the production of spaces for women, which I think this
book is intended for, defining women as “for those who are assigned or assign themselves as
women, for those who willfully accept being women as their assignment, those of us who come
up against walls that prevent our existence, those who are “clumsy” bumping aginst fragile
relations. Everyone needs to read this book because as Ahmed writes, “Feminism is wherever
feminist needs to be. Feminist needs to be everywhere” 4.

Critical Evaluation
Erasure of black experiences through making those experiences fungible
1. Use of black feminism symbol
2. “Black: not universal. Not universal: particular. Not white, particular.” 134. Proceeding
engagement with Frantz Fanon and Lewis Gordan erases the particular distinctions of
blackness and equates “non-white” categorization as the same as the category of black.
3. Again Ahmed reduces and equates black and non-black people of color experiences.
“feminist becomes a conversation that is not our own. Audre Lorde (1984a), bell hooks
(2000), Sunera Thobani (2003), and Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2003) have all taught me
to think about the figure of the angry black woman, the angry woman of color, as well as
the angry indigenous woman, as another kind of feminist killjoy; a feminist killjoy who
kills feminist joy.