Letter from a feminist killjoy

(Or why I am withdrawing from Più libri più liberi)

November 27 2024

Dear Italian feminists,

I write to you as a feminist scholar and writer. My book The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (Il manuale della femminista guastafest) has recently been translated into Italian by Fandango.

I was going to be speaking about feminist killjoys at Più libri più liberi on Friday December 6^th.

I am grateful to feminist activists, as well as my publishers, who alerted me to the circumstances surrounding the fair, by which I mean, the extending of an invitation to a scholar who is currently on trial for conduct including domestic violence and gendered abuse. I have read the initial defence of that invitation (on the grounds of the freedom of those presumed innocent to speak) and the apology given by festival organisers (primarily for the hurt caused).

My own view is that the apology is insufficient. There needs to be a full acknowledgment not just that the invitation was wrong but why it was wrong, especially given the Fair was going to be dedicated to the memory of Giulia Cecchettin. To acknowledge why the invitation was wrong would be to commit to the feminist task of not reproducing the culture that normalises (and excuses and forgives) sexual violence.

I have thus decided not to attend nor speak at the fair. I want to say a little more about this decision by sharing with you some of my own experiences and commitments.

For me, living a feminist life – and being a feminist killjoy - is about standing up to, and speaking out against, all forms of violence including institutional violence as well as sexual violence. We must do this even when (or perhaps especially when) that means giving up opportunities. We know our feminist commitments when they become inconvenient! In 2016, I left my own post and profession because my university failed to acknowledge sexual harassment as an institutional problem. There had been multiple enquiries over many years involving allegations against many persons, but they still treated the issue as being about an individual. That way, the role of the institution in enabling the harassment was obscured (the enquiries would probably still be a secret if I had not resigned and leaked information about them).

When we treat the problem as being about an individual (and his freedom to express himself) we have stopped addressing the cause of the problem: how certain forms of conduct are not just permitted but often enabled and rewarded by institutions themselves. We can give that problem its name: patriarchy. But another lesson from feminist killjoys, to name the problem is to become the problem. My research into the mechanisms of complaint, which is one way we can identify the problem, has taught how so much violence and harassment tend to be treated as styles or manners of individual expression. One example: a head of department physically assaulted a woman. He was described in the report as having “a direct style of management.” He was allowed to stay; she was told to leave. When institutions enable harassment, we are talking about how many people are missing from them. That is why, in order not to reproduce a culture of harassment, institutions, or at least those who speak for them, have to say no, publicly and loudly. That no is no guarantee of change but the start of a conversation about what needs to change.

And that would be a conversation about freedom. By freedom we need to include social conditions that affect whether some people can participate in a conversation about freedom. In the past I have accepted platforms to speak in venues only to be told later that they were not accessible to the people I most wanted to address. I think of one time I gave a lecture at a university in a theatre that had been used earlier to discuss complaints about sexual violence. Some students told me they could not come to my lecture because they would be retraumatised by entering that space.

It is one of my killjoy commitments to do what I can to make sure that the people most affected by the forms of power and violence discussed in my work can participate in discussions of it. I know there are some people who are not free, because of their experiences and commitments, to enter the space provided by Più libri più liberi. I thus cannot bring feminist killjoys to the fair.

I remain deeply committed to feminist ideas – and to dismantling the very institutions that stop us from being free to live our lives in our own way. I will still be coming to Rome and look forward to talking to other feminists who share this commitment. We are organising three events and my publisher will provide details of these very soon.

In killjoy solidarity,

Sara Ahmed