On Receiving Accounts from Others

This essay takes up Judith Butler’s invitation to consider accounts of oneself as scenes of address by asking what follows when those accounts are complaints. Drawing on an empirical study of complaints made in universities, it examines how receiving complaints from others involves challenging the ways complaints are not heard by institutions, especially when they do not take the form of complaints made about individuals by individuals. It shows how we can draw on Butler’s reflections on accounts as “scenes of address” to explore complaints both as accounts given to institutions and as efforts to bring institutions to account. It calls the task of listening to complaints “becoming a feminist ear.”