Living a Feminist Life

An “affect alien” is alienated from a family, community, or world because of how they are affected. Affect, here, is both noun and verb, referring to an emotional response and how that response is triggered and portrayed. An affect alien is not made happy by the things society has deemed should make her happy, and she is made happy by things that society has deemed wrong, bad, or inappropriate.

Ahmed uses the term “diversity work” in two different but related ways: “first, diversity work is the work we do when we are attempting to transform an institution; and second, diversity work is the work we do when we do not quite inhabit the norms of an institution” (91). Specifically, the first kind of work refers to appointments to various diversity officer and diversity committee roles within an institution (university, workplace, etc.) intended to make positive changes in inclusiveness. The second kind of work is the labor of merely existing in an institutional space without quite fitting in “correctly.”

Ahmed expands and complicates her concept of “feminism” throughout the entire text. However, she posits a few foundational elements. First, she opens with bell hook’s definition of feminism as “the movement to end sexism, sexual exploitation and sexual oppression” (5).