Author: yun

In her book, Sara Ahmed keeps talking about how the complaint is not conceived seriously and authentically. Likes she mentioned, inside of the cabinet, we can easily find out a dead complaint buried intentionally which is the general end of the complaint. Furthermore, she mentioned “holding the doors” (chapter 6). In this chapter, she depicts the attributes of the complaint itself or attributes of the process of complaint. “I can hold the door for you.” is the same meaning as “I can hold the door for you till I want.” So the meaning of “holding door” or “hearing complaint” is always up to the discretion of the gatekeeper and listener.

During reading her books, I focused on the fact that every complaint has a different narrative and context. But even though it comes from a discrete background, most of the complaints are written in the same form and lose their own story during the process of “hearing”. In a way, keeping the ambiguity of complaints is key to the revival of buried complaints. Eventually, I conclude, AMBIGUITY is only concretized through an individual platform. However institutional systems deny and disregard the exceptional and ambiguous situation exceedingly. Thus, they define all problems in a form.

On the other hand, forcing integrity and authenticity on complainers is another kind of violence. This problem also applies to the form that must be marked ‘compulsory’(*) on one of their designated entry. Most often, the word “genuine” or “truth” is abused and misused. Especially if you are in the position of “hearing”, you’d say “I want to know the truth of the whole story.” Thus, you want to dig the truth. Eventually, it will hurt the person you are facing now despite the truth only existing regardless of the role of “hearing”.

Thus, I started to question how can I let the complaint be exposed to the surface like it was supposed to be without interpretation and intervention. The process of hearing should be distinct from imposing. Then, what can I do for complaint when the time has been passed to expose so it has been stuck down below. Furthermore, as a result, what is the role of the “listener”?

While the speaker made a complaint, there was another “I” who heard the complaint.

This “I” was, usually, or could be, a close friend or family.

However, the Emotional Worker or Counter Staff was the first person – who picked up the phone and answered or provided the basic requirements and guided the procedure and this could have been their first encounter.

This “I” is in charge and makes them fill the formula, asks them to wait till next week or next month, and delivers the papers to the committee.

 I (the counter staff, the emotional worker) had the duty of encoding or numbering the REAL COMPLAINT into JUST LETTERS and categorizing these complaints according to a given method.

In this numbered paper, there was no FACE, VOICE, EMOTION or indication that ‘I’ was heard.

I felt that they gasped for breath when they were angry and devastated. But when the complaints were delivered to the superiors, they could only see the well-ordered words. There was no reality. Thus, at some point, whenever I encountered THE SPEAKER, I pretended that I couldn’t hear-see-feel their complaints. 

This is my confession which I regret making rather late in time. I worked for many years as counter staff and I still remember passing the speaker by with an empty look. These memories struck me vividly while I read this book.

Unfortunately, the entire process of making the complaint is laid with privatizing the complaint. 

Compared with making criticism, during the procedure of making a complaint mostly have the I, or first person. 

So relevantly, the complaint itself involves – who struggles with making a complaint – I, the first person that is speaking.

This person is directly concerned as a complainer which is easily entailed to a label or document as Sara Ahmed said. 

And during the complaint work, I realized “Me and my complaint could not be separated.”

Internalizing the complaint naturally happens to I, but not to others. At the same time, I even experience that people equated me and my complaint.

“My complaint is not my whole, but still, this is affecting me” 

For approving the existing I, existing complaint, the first person has become a speaker again and again. 

Through enduring pain, their bodies [voice, face, tremble … ] represent testimony.

And It began to be a citation.

If bodies can end up in documents, and documents can end up in files, bodies can also be files or perhaps bodies can be filing cabinets, holders of multiple files. What is filed away by institutions can be stored in our bod- ies, experienced often as weight. The body of the complainer is a testimony to the work of complaint

Sara Ahmed “Complaints!” 2021