From Denial to Shaming: Resentment and Other Stories on Being Critical, Muslim, Person of Colour in Global Academia

This chapter is not about complaining. It is an act that is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Instead, this chapter is an attempt to determine the state of denial that precedes the complaining, believing that some of the complaints generate resistance and some generate sorrow. In this chapter, I primarily think about Sara Ahmed’s work on complaining. Yet, I have some comments and observations about Sara Ahmed's thesis on complaint. This chapter precedes the submerged phase of Sara Ahmed's (and others’) work. Here, I want to talk about multilayer and intersectional forms of (mis)treatment, injustice, exclusion, and silencing practised by academic and research institutions and individuals within this dirty pool (I do not tend to differentiate between the two as many would like to do). Secondly, I want to reveal how such discourses and practices establish, shape, and manifest the rules of what Sara Ahmed calls the “institutional mechanics” of exclusion, marginalization, injustice, and discrimination, and how individual and collective experiences of denial and resentment are the constitutive factors in the act of complaint.