Complexity Carriers and the Burden of Balance

Abstract This article examines the affective positioning of Israeli Jewish students in Oxford following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, it introduces the concept of “complexity carriers” to describe individuals tasked with holding conflicting emotional and political expectations in polarised academic spaces. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies and engaging with Judith Butler’s work on grievability, the article analyses how grief is recognised, controlled, or rendered illegible depending on the subject’s perceived complicity. It investigates who is permitted to grieve, under what conditions, and at what emotional cost. Through the lens of affect, the article reveals how moral legibility and recognition operate unevenly across institutional and interpersonal contexts, and how friendship and silence may emerge as an alternative affective grammar.