Wijsgerig Perspectief - Volume 65, Issue 1, 2025

Abstract Sara Ahmed’s work On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life shows how diversity discourses shape institutional life within universities. Three related concepts in this work are ‘non-performativity’, ‘doing the document’, and ‘plumbing’. In this essay, we examine these concepts in the context of diversity policy within Dutch universities and municipalities. We draw from ethnographic fieldwork to ex Read More

Abstract This essay analyzes the complexities of a seemingly innocuous situation, namely when lesbian couples are asked whether they are sisters, with the help of Sara Ahmed’s contribution to queer theory. Ahmed shows such sister-confusion to be situated in a compulsory heterosexual world wherein queer movements become disorientating. To solve such disorientation, queers get ‘straightened’ in everyday encounters: a cou Read More

Abstract Sara Ahmed was among the first academics to openly support students’ Palestine solidarity encampments. She asserts that such encampments function similarly to complaints, targeting mechanisms that perpetuate and normalise violence. Ahmed’s work conceptualises complaints as forms of resistance that expose institutional power structures, often maintained through ‘straightening devices’; mechani Read More