A driving force behind my writing passion is political activism ….writing may galvanize readers to be more politically aware [with] or without that being the writer’s sole intent (bell hooks, 1999: 16).
In recent months I have been re-reading Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness (published by Duke University Press in 2010) and two books by bell hooks; Remembered Rapture: the writer at work (Holt Books,1999) and All About Love: new visions (Harper Collins, 2001).
Reading these texts together leaves me with a dilemma. That is, how can I agree with Ahmed’s (2010) call to disrupt, to challenge, to ‘kill joy’, whilst at the same time strongly supporting bell hooks’ argument that we need to bring a ‘love ethic’ to every dimension of our lives?
A little more detail before I attempt to address my struggles. For Sara Ahmed:
There is a desire to believe that women become feminists because they are unhappy…. feminists are read as being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence and power can are read as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than being what feminists are unhappy about (Ahmed, 2010: 66-67 original emphasis).
And:
My desire is to revitalize the feminist critique of happiness as a human right and an appropriate language for politics…. There is solidarity in recognizing our alienation from happiness, even if we do not inhabit the same place (as we do not). There can even be a joy in killing joy. And kill joy, we must and we do (Ahmed, 2010: 87).
Whereas for bell hooks:
To bring a love ethic to every dimension of our lives, our society would need to embrace change…. We do this by choosing to work with individuals we admire and respect; by committing to give our all to relationships, by embracing a global vision wherein we see our lives and our fate as intimately connected to those of everyone else on the planet…. (bell hooks, 2001: 87-88).
For Sara Ahmed disruption, challenge, unhappiness and rage are politically meaningful. She shows how dominant culture pathologises the righteous anger of feminists (and others) denying structural injustice, reframing it as a personal, emotional problem (see Charles Wright Mills’ (1959) discussion of the relationship between personal troubles and public issues here also). Those who speak uncomfortable truths are framed as causing conflict rather than revealing it and un/happiness is used to discipline those who challenge social norms (Ahmed, 2010). I make connections here with my own work with those whose experiences and identities are unheard. Despite widespread commitment to 'giving people a voice', many experiences and identities remain inaudible within dominant, powerful and noisy social, cultural and political narratives. My awareness of this, originating in my work on non/motherhood, has extended into other auto/biographical projects, including studies of death and loss, solitary ageing, bodily ambivalence and the labour of ethical (self)care (e.g. Letherby, 2022, 2024, forthcoming; Clarkson and Letherby, 2026, forthcoming). So childless women and men are mis-labelled as ‘bitter’, solitary older adults misunderstood as ‘anti-social’ and ‘sad’, and the messiness of many people’s relationship to their bodily, emotional and spiritual selves, is dismissed if they deviate in any way from what is socially expected and valued. With all of these experiences, and more, in mind Ahmed helps me to think about how unheardness is produced, through social and institutional othering.
Although on first reading bell hooks (1999, 2001) may appear to be arguing something very different her ideas are in fact complementary to Ahmed’s. As my chosen quote to begin this piece highlights bell hooks’ work is rooted in political activism and her concern is to find alternative ways to work, to challenge, to be. Furthermore, her commitment to a ‘love ethic’ is not a sentimental or romantic one, rather it insists on honesty, openness, relational accountability and positive transformation. Again, my thinking is aided, for in order to really hear the unheard we need to listen differently. This includes being aware that the research process is always emotional, embodied and political that that a commitment to integrity, care, and openness is the only way to practice if we want our work, including our research findings, to make any kind of difference. This attention to complexity, to practicing and listening differently and to usefulness, is what I have attempted across my academic research and writing life (e.g. Letherby, 2002, 2003, 2015, 2020, 2026).
In sum when hearing misunderstood and marginalised experiences and when listening to those who feel in some, or all, ways dismissed and silenced, we must embrace both the courage to disturb (Ahmed) and the commitment to care (bell hooks). To put this another way; to hear the unheard, we must be willing to disturb the atmospheres that keep them silent and to cultivate the relational ethics that make new forms of recognition possible. Disruption and love are not opposites; together they form a care-full methodology for recognising and valuing unheard lives.
***
What does such a commitment to disruption and care mean in practice? For me it is realised, and enacted, through theorised subjectivity, slow listening and critical, creative auto/biographical storytelling.
In making a case for theorised subjectivity, rather than foregrounding objectivity, I begin with the subjective. I do not reject objectivity as an epistemological value but I do argue that we need to recognise subjectivity as an inevitable part of our work for if we do not, we are likely to miss (more of) the things that impact on our ability to speak as knowledge producers. Thus, I insist on the interrogation of the positionality of all those involved. Ironically, this super-sensitivity to the relevance of the positionality (personhood) of the researcher and/or author (and of respondents and others) can feasibly lead to the conclusion that our work is more objective, in that if not value-free, it is value-explicit. Theorised subjectivity begins then with the recognition that we never listen from nowhere. Our histories, identities, encounters and emotions shape how we hear others. Instead of pretending to be neutral theorised subjectivity uses this awareness as a source of ethical responsibility (e.g. Letherby, 2003; Letherby et al., 2012; Letherby, 2026).
Slow listening depends on this. You cannot listen slowly, with care, openness and attention, unless you first acknowledge the position you are listening from. This is why theorised subjectivity is the ethical foundation of slow listening which in turn is the way in which we put theorised subjectivity into practice. Slow listening means listening for absence as well as presence in the stories we are told; what is hard to say (and to hear). Slow listening values emotion as data rather than distraction or something to be avoided. Slow listeningnecessitates sitting with discomfort, challenging one’s own assumptions and values whilst also recognising the way in which we are externally perceived influences what others might share with us. Slow listening then is the methodological practice through which disruption and care, rage and love, are brought together.
Care-full research necessitates consideration of its impact on those who research, as well as those who are researched. Others, including many feminists, have written about the politics of care, relationality and social justice within the academy. Rogowska-Stangret (2021: 13) for example argues for care as a methodology where:
…care thus conceptualized is a way to reimagine research methodologies and practices for higher education pedagogies so that they could inspire, help and provide academic communities to face the challenges of “our today”.
Similar arguments and hopeful alternatives to care-lessness are suggested by Chrissie Rogers (2022), Adrian Kelly (2015), and Emile Dionne (2021); all of whom Tracey and Collett and I (Collett and Letherby, 2024) draw on in an article arguing for the possibility of positive collaboration and collective creativity to enrich our working and our personal lives. Emilie Dionne (2021: 92) writes of the slow scholarship movement which aims to create and enact sustainable, positive, creative and liveable scholarship as well as create space for it where one can come, join, live, thrive and strive with attention to uniqueness and differences. As such slow scholarship aims to:
….rekindle “people-level” ways of knowing, being and becoming in “sustainable” ways; it also articulates itself as a micro-practice/politics, operating as sublevels ...hardly perceptible at times but transgressive and subversive....
And yet a focus on an ethics of care and relatedly slow scholarship may be co-opted by the academy, as slow scholarship does not necessarily mean less scholarship, and self/collaborative care may release the institution from its own duty of care (Collett and Letherby, 2024). Despite this, Tracey and I, drawing on our own auto/biographical practice, found ourselves agreeing with Lynne Segal (2017) who in her book, Radical Happiness: moments of collective joy, argues:
…the potential for the unleashing of collective action in almost any form, and along with that the moments of shared joy, collective energies easily foster, are always reappearing on the social horizon. This is why breaking down distances between people remains possible, at least some of the time, when we are working together for happier futures.
A position which for me resonates with my contention that slow listening can, and should be, embedded within research, and indeed within everyday life more generally.
In arguing for theorised subjectivity and with a commitment to slow listening my approach embraces, and represents, critical, creative auto/biographical storytelling. I work with taboo topics, with the tension between choice and control, with feelings of uncertainty and ambivalence, and with embodied knowledge (my own and others) to make space for experiences that dominant narratives often overlook. I challenge traditional conceptions of knowledge production that suggest that the research process should, and can, be hygienic, neat, tidy and value free. I accept and embrace research as a messy, embodied, emotional, power-laden, political experience. I argue that all research is subjective auto/biographical practice and that attending to our research processes is essential because every product we produce is shaped by the conditions of its making. Attention to embodiment, to power, to emotion and to politics helps uncover the places where structural inequalities are felt most acutely. Grief, shame, rage, guilt, longing, and love, care and happiness can reveal the circumstances that result in othering and unheardness.
For me research is a way of redistributing voice, challenging the conditions that produce unheardness, and making visible the structural arrangements that leave some lives misrepresented, unrecognised, silenced. Furthermore, and to end near to where I began, listening to the unheard requires the disruption and unhappiness that Sara Ahmed (2010) calls for, as this is essential to expose silencing. Listening to the unheard also requires the care, the love, that bell hooks (2001) champions, in order to build the conditions where unheard voices can be recognised, welcomed and valued.
Disrupting and challenging harmful and inaccurate stereotypes and behaviours, and working for better understandings and practices, is a form of care, of love. Unheardness is produced through social silencing; hearing the unheard requires both disruption and care, rage and love. Slow listening, grounded in theorised subjectivity and critical creative auto/biographical storytelling, is, I contend, the means through which these commitments are enacted.
***
With thanks to Tracey Collett and Andrew Clarkson; two people who practice care-fully every day.
References
Ahmed, S. (2010) The Promise of Happiness Durham and London: Duke University Press
bell hooks (1999) Remembered Rapture: the writer at work New York: Holt Books.
bell hooks (2001) All About Love: New Visions New York: Harper Collins.
Clarkson, A. and Letherby, G. (2026) Where Is the Happy in an Open-Ended Story? ttps://ethical-exercise-lab.com/where-is-the-happy-in-an-open-ended-story
Clarkson, A. and Letherby, G. (forthcoming) The Politics of Personal Training: a critical exploration of fitness coaching London: Routledge
Collett, T. and Letherby, G. (2024) ‘‘If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution(s)’: On being together in and outside of the academy’ Auto/Biography Review 5(1): 31–52
Dionne, E. (2021) ‘Slowing Down with Non-Human Matter: The contribution of feminist new materialism to slow scholarship’ in Bozalek V, Zembylas, M. Tronto, J.C. (eds.) Posthuman and Political Care Ethics for Reconfiguring Higher Education Pedagogies London: Routledge, 91-106.
Kelly, A. (2015) ‘Intimacy and emotional labour in academic development’ International Journal for Academic Development 20(1): 93-104.
Letherby, G. (2002) 'Claims and Disclaimers: knowledge, reflexivity and representation in feminist research' Sociological Research Online 6(4): 81-93.
Letherby, G. (2003) Feminist Research in Theory and Practice Buckingham: Open University.
Letherby G (2015) ‘Gendered-Sensitive Method/ologies’ in Robinson C and Richardson D (eds) Introducing Gender and Women’s Studies 4th edition London: Palgrave (5th Edition 2020, revised, 6th Edition, 2026, revised).
Letherby, G. (2022) ‘Thirty Years and Counting: an-other auto/biographical story’ Auto/Biography Review 3(1): 13-31.
Letherby, G. (2024) ‘Deploying sociological fiction and memoir to explore issues of loss, kindness, and emotional wellbeing’ in Moran, L. and Dooley, Z. (eds.) Biographical Perspectives on Lives Lived During Covid-19: Global Narratives and International Methodological Innovations London: Springer, 343-363.
Letherby, G. (forthcoming) ‘Reflections on non/mothering, loss, love and legacy’ in Kovacic, T. Prieto-Blanco, P. and Moran, L. (eds.) Voice in Biographical Narrative Research: Fragmentation, Legitimation, and Reflexivity London: Routledge,.
Letherby, G. Scott, J. and Williams, M. (2012) Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research London: Sage.
Mills, C.W. (1959) The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rogers, C. (2017) ‘I’m Complicit and I’m Ambivalent and that’s Crazy’: Care-less Spaces for Women in the Academy’ Women’s Studies International Forum 61:115-122.
Rogowska-Stangret, M. (2021) ‘Care as a Methodology: Reading Natalie Jeremijenko and Vinciane Despret diffractively’ in Bozalek V, Zembylas M, Tronto J.C. (eds.) Posthuman and Political Care Ethics for Reconfiguring Higher Education Pedagogies London: Routledge, 13-26.
Segal, L. (2017) Radical Happiness: moments of collective joy London: Verso.
