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Willful Subjects
In Willful Subjects Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
45 people are currently reading
1456 people want to read
About the author
Sara Ahmed
55 books1,697 followersSara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her most recent book is No is Not a Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining which came out with Allen Lane in September 2025, and which is a companion text to The Feminist Killjoy Handbook which was published by Allen Lane in 2023. Previous books include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Orientations Objects, Others all published by Duke University Press. She blogs at feministkilljoys.com and has a newsletter https://feministkilljoys.substack.com/.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 27, 2021
I was looking forward to this book, and I am left both ambivalent and saddened. It is the absence of class - the absence of poverty - the absence of the crushed and broken sense of self - that is of my concern. I understand the passion - and the call to arms (and hands...) in summoning the Willful Subject. I want to believe. I want to be right there - and reaching and disagreeing and disturbing and challenging.
But ... But ... But... This book was written through the period of the global financial crisis. Indeed 'the bankers' are mentioned over two pages. But what about those suffering in poverty? Where is the deep attention to class? Willfulness is possible if choices are available? A complex and intricate theorization of capitalism is required.
In poverty - or clinging onto a dreadful casualized job - or living with debilitating sickness - or struggling through complex caring responsibilities - willfulness not only costs us self respect and self esteem. It costs us stable housing. A wage is lost. Life is lost.
The second issue is the selection of source material and examples. The use of a particular slice of novels from English Literature blocks a more complex discussion of willful subjects in and through popular culture. Might Madonna, Beyonce and Lady Gaga have more to offer a discussion of willful subjects than George Eliot? That is for another scholar to research.
As always, there are inspirational sentences and paragraphs. But a wider array of research - a deeper engagement with cultural material (and material culture) - would have enriched the book.
Sadly, willfulness requires power, security, confidence and consciousness. For the billions of people living in poverty or who are one week away from losing their jobs, willfulness remains a luxury.
But ... But ... But... This book was written through the period of the global financial crisis. Indeed 'the bankers' are mentioned over two pages. But what about those suffering in poverty? Where is the deep attention to class? Willfulness is possible if choices are available? A complex and intricate theorization of capitalism is required.
In poverty - or clinging onto a dreadful casualized job - or living with debilitating sickness - or struggling through complex caring responsibilities - willfulness not only costs us self respect and self esteem. It costs us stable housing. A wage is lost. Life is lost.
The second issue is the selection of source material and examples. The use of a particular slice of novels from English Literature blocks a more complex discussion of willful subjects in and through popular culture. Might Madonna, Beyonce and Lady Gaga have more to offer a discussion of willful subjects than George Eliot? That is for another scholar to research.
As always, there are inspirational sentences and paragraphs. But a wider array of research - a deeper engagement with cultural material (and material culture) - would have enriched the book.
Sadly, willfulness requires power, security, confidence and consciousness. For the billions of people living in poverty or who are one week away from losing their jobs, willfulness remains a luxury.
June 24, 2016
Willful Subjects doesn't take flight until the last third of the book, and when it does, it soars. The subject of "willfullness" as a feminist issue, has been a pressing matter for centuries. In this book, Sara Ahmed examines the philosophical construction of the "will" via Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger, and Kant. With the exception of Nietzsche's work, Ahmed is rightly critical of how these philosophers (and some phenomenologists) have shaped individuals who are "willful" as undisciplined children. Ahmed argues that this patronizing discourse is directly related to its temporal construction that is to say these philosopher's were writing (with the exception of Heidegger) during the period of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Ahmed then proceeds to pull out their accounts of racism and declare that the "willful" subject is an individual that does not confirm, and indeed rebells, against the "will" of the State. Furthermore, in the second to last chapter Ahmed makes the connection of rebelling, not being in line with, to that of the feminist killjoy a term she has defined as the individual who does not make peace and disrupts the order of casual racism and sexism. The feminist killjoy, as a figure, is the individual who sits at the table and speaks out against the "jovial" sexist/racist joke, and through their utterance against, kills the hegemonic joy had at the expense of marginalized individuals. My only critique is that the explicitly of Ahmed's critique against the 16th century's construction of will via the work of Black feminist thought only occupies the ending pages in the book's conclusion. While, Ahmed's use of this rhetoric is dead on, I couldn't help but view this gesture as inherently participating in the institutional citational politics that shapes how scholars engage with Black women's work. Indeed, most of my notes for the first half of the book were discarded by the end, but remain a testament that Ahmed did not account for a field of study that has negotiated with the subject of willfullness until the end. While I think Ahmed's book is a great resource for individuals who desire a feminist critique of the philosophical construction of the will, I can't help but note how Ahmed navigated this critique is problematic.
August 2, 2024
I feel like the Willful Subjects is a step-down in quality from the power of Queer Phenomenology. Perhaps this book is more meaningful for those deeply invested in notions of will philosophically, but I found the depth in Willful Subjects less transformative for me, even if some sections, such as those on Poisonous Pedagogy, fascinate me. I’m more impressed than a short excerpt from this book managed to influence an entire book in monster studies, Willful Monstrosity. Maybe this book will be more impactful for those who are not already heavily familiar with concepts of discipline and punishment a la Foucault and other philosophers who have dedicated work to critiquing state powers?
November 22, 2018
A powerful call to arms to be feminist killjoys and, in our stubbornness, to refuse to be willing participants in patriarchy. <3
This is my new favorite text on acting that never talks about acting.
This is my new favorite text on acting that never talks about acting.
January 1, 2026
For a year of reading, featured with works by Sara Ahmed, it is great to finish with a favourite one, Willful Subjects.
More on this one and others later. Or at least I hope I get a chance to write more!
More on this one and others later. Or at least I hope I get a chance to write more!
February 2, 2023
hochintelligent, komplex, bestärkend - ein beeindruckendes Archiv des Eigensinnigen und Widerspenstigen, das die Potenziale des Nichtzubändigenden greifbar macht
February 4, 2015
A brilliant, wide-ranging account of the history of the concept of "the will," described by the author as a work of not-philosophy. In her characteristic stylized, almost lyrical prose, Ahmed draws broadly from philosophy, literature, film, and personal experience to craft a deeply inspiring feminist, queer, and anti-racist history of willfulness, the condition of getting in the way. Drawing from the work she began on her blog, Feminist Killjoys, Ahmed tracks the willful subject through three key figurations: the guest, the willful child, and the stranger, all of whom are defined as "those who come after." Touching a kind of powerful, feminist rage not often seen in comprehensive academic theory, Ahmed beautifully weaves the theoretical with the polemical. A must read!!!
August 31, 2016
I wanted to love this, but it really didn't move me. I would have been fine with a bullet point summary of the key ideas which - although very interesting - are described in such tedious and repetitive detail that I don't even think I want to see the word 'will' again.
Read
March 1, 2016"Willful Subjects is a rich, complex, wondrous archive of willfulness. The array of texts, voices, problems and approaches is both painstaking and playful, validating and challenging." — Heather Rakes xcphilosophy blog
“Ahmed’s insights, as always, are both intellectually fertile and provocative; Willful Subjects will not disappoint.” — Margrit Shildrick Signs
“In Willful Subjects, cultural theorist Sara Ahmed provides a history of willfulness. Her study reveals some significant and fascinating aspects of this history, and points to areas of future scholarly enquiry. . . . The book offers a comprehensive and intellectually rigorous treatise on a topic that is more complex than it may initially appear. This text also provides further evidence of Ahmed’s scholarly nous. “ — Jay Daniel Thompson M/C Reviews
“Ahmed has produced an erudite archive of willfulness, tracing the ideas of the will and willfulness through Western thought since Augustine. Admonitory fairy tales and George Eliot’s novels serve as articulations of philosophy. Ahmed engages in a queer reading of willfulness, a reading that does not presume that willfulness is negative. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.” — J. L. Croissant Choice
“The book’s language is sharp and clear; its arguments are creative and original, as well as thoroughly researched with copious footnotes. Ahmed’s prose is virtuoso. An extended theoretical essay on the concept of the eponymous willful subject, this book is a mix of philosophy, political theory, and literary criticism. Ahmed’s unique combination of theoretical questioning, politics, and poetics is both the work’s subject matter and its writing style. Willful Subjects is a beautifully crafted book.”
— Michelle Hartman Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World Review
“Ahmed effectively imitates the twisting together of thought, affect, memory, and insight, drawing connections between things that may appear disparate, and noticing disjunctions in what was previously knit together. … [B]y drawing widely and richly on works of philosophy, literature, film, and everydayness, Ahmed shows how in social life, one affect or action may be judged to be quite another. This allows us to attend not only to behaviors and orientations, but to how those are read by others, to why and in what ways certain actions and affects are felt and interpreted as problematic, as willful.” — Anna Mudde Hypatia
“[Ahmed’s] appeal to the reader to not let things go for the sake of social ease and the general happiness is compelling. It might be easier to smile politely when you are being patronized, or let racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic remarks go unchallenged. But Ahmed’s book reminds us how much the ‘small’ things matter when you are excluded from the ‘we,’ or when the joke is on you. As a kind of inversion of Kant’s universalism of the will, her ‘willfulness maxim’ – ‘don’t get over it, if you are not over it!’ – serves as an important affirmation of the courage and ‘daily grind’ entailed in micropolitical labour and the ‘refusal to adjust to an unjust world.’” — Victoria Browne Radical Philosophy
“Willful Subjects is essential reading for those working in feminism, disability studies, queer theory, critical race studies, and/or phenomenology who reject the notion that a new world or a better one is simply tied to asserting the will to make it so. This is a book for those willing to slow down to queer the will and contemplate what we have been up to, willingly or not.” — Tanya Titchkosky Contemporary Women's Writing
“Without being too idealistic, this book should be in the collection of every activist and organiser working to create a different world. The last chapter in particular offers much that can reinforce and reinvigorate the willful when feeling isolated and downbeat. Followers of Sara Ahmed’s work will not be disappointed with her latest offering.” — Lizzy Willmington Feminist Legal Studies
“Ahmed’s book has powerful potential for scholars invested in challenging the white, androcentric, heteronormative boundaries historically constructed around western philosophy specifically, and around 'the subject,' more generally. Willful Subjects also provides fruitful new avenues for exploring contemporary feminist debates about women’s agency, particularly with respect to the ‘gatekeeping’ tendencies observable in much mainstream, western liberal feminist discourse. I would argue that scholars interested in rethinking the relationship between philosophy and literature would also benefit from Ahmed’s work, as would those whose research focuses on the history of emotions.” — Samantha A. Langsdale Wagadu
“Ahmed’s writing is well weaved and always compelling, but her determination to maintain the complexity of the issue creates a state of suspended incompletion that demonstrates Ahmed’s own willfulness (the will to leave the topic unresolved), as well as an expectation that there can and must be future applications for this willfulness archive. Ahmed’s arm the willful entity that is her subject is one that reaches instead of carries; it signifies instead of embodies. Read Willful Subjects, then, not to see what the arm has accomplished in reaching out of the dirt but to see the very disturbances in the dirt itself and to imagine where toward what futures the many willful arms on the book’s final page also reach.” — Krista Quesenberry Critical Policy Studies
“Ahmed’s insights, as always, are both intellectually fertile and provocative; Willful Subjects will not disappoint.” — Margrit Shildrick Signs
“In Willful Subjects, cultural theorist Sara Ahmed provides a history of willfulness. Her study reveals some significant and fascinating aspects of this history, and points to areas of future scholarly enquiry. . . . The book offers a comprehensive and intellectually rigorous treatise on a topic that is more complex than it may initially appear. This text also provides further evidence of Ahmed’s scholarly nous. “ — Jay Daniel Thompson M/C Reviews
“Ahmed has produced an erudite archive of willfulness, tracing the ideas of the will and willfulness through Western thought since Augustine. Admonitory fairy tales and George Eliot’s novels serve as articulations of philosophy. Ahmed engages in a queer reading of willfulness, a reading that does not presume that willfulness is negative. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.” — J. L. Croissant Choice
“The book’s language is sharp and clear; its arguments are creative and original, as well as thoroughly researched with copious footnotes. Ahmed’s prose is virtuoso. An extended theoretical essay on the concept of the eponymous willful subject, this book is a mix of philosophy, political theory, and literary criticism. Ahmed’s unique combination of theoretical questioning, politics, and poetics is both the work’s subject matter and its writing style. Willful Subjects is a beautifully crafted book.”
— Michelle Hartman Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World Review
“Ahmed effectively imitates the twisting together of thought, affect, memory, and insight, drawing connections between things that may appear disparate, and noticing disjunctions in what was previously knit together. … [B]y drawing widely and richly on works of philosophy, literature, film, and everydayness, Ahmed shows how in social life, one affect or action may be judged to be quite another. This allows us to attend not only to behaviors and orientations, but to how those are read by others, to why and in what ways certain actions and affects are felt and interpreted as problematic, as willful.” — Anna Mudde Hypatia
“[Ahmed’s] appeal to the reader to not let things go for the sake of social ease and the general happiness is compelling. It might be easier to smile politely when you are being patronized, or let racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic remarks go unchallenged. But Ahmed’s book reminds us how much the ‘small’ things matter when you are excluded from the ‘we,’ or when the joke is on you. As a kind of inversion of Kant’s universalism of the will, her ‘willfulness maxim’ – ‘don’t get over it, if you are not over it!’ – serves as an important affirmation of the courage and ‘daily grind’ entailed in micropolitical labour and the ‘refusal to adjust to an unjust world.’” — Victoria Browne Radical Philosophy
“Willful Subjects is essential reading for those working in feminism, disability studies, queer theory, critical race studies, and/or phenomenology who reject the notion that a new world or a better one is simply tied to asserting the will to make it so. This is a book for those willing to slow down to queer the will and contemplate what we have been up to, willingly or not.” — Tanya Titchkosky Contemporary Women's Writing
“Without being too idealistic, this book should be in the collection of every activist and organiser working to create a different world. The last chapter in particular offers much that can reinforce and reinvigorate the willful when feeling isolated and downbeat. Followers of Sara Ahmed’s work will not be disappointed with her latest offering.” — Lizzy Willmington Feminist Legal Studies
“Ahmed’s book has powerful potential for scholars invested in challenging the white, androcentric, heteronormative boundaries historically constructed around western philosophy specifically, and around 'the subject,' more generally. Willful Subjects also provides fruitful new avenues for exploring contemporary feminist debates about women’s agency, particularly with respect to the ‘gatekeeping’ tendencies observable in much mainstream, western liberal feminist discourse. I would argue that scholars interested in rethinking the relationship between philosophy and literature would also benefit from Ahmed’s work, as would those whose research focuses on the history of emotions.” — Samantha A. Langsdale Wagadu
“Ahmed’s writing is well weaved and always compelling, but her determination to maintain the complexity of the issue creates a state of suspended incompletion that demonstrates Ahmed’s own willfulness (the will to leave the topic unresolved), as well as an expectation that there can and must be future applications for this willfulness archive. Ahmed’s arm the willful entity that is her subject is one that reaches instead of carries; it signifies instead of embodies. Read Willful Subjects, then, not to see what the arm has accomplished in reaching out of the dirt but to see the very disturbances in the dirt itself and to imagine where toward what futures the many willful arms on the book’s final page also reach.” — Krista Quesenberry Critical Policy Studies
January 3, 2020
Extremely dense and hard to finish read. While Ahmed creates an extensive and excellent genealogy of willfulness, the vocabulary used it is overly academic would make it hard for every person to access.
October 26, 2025
Missing a few important aspects for sure, but overall very interesting. Enjoyed the connection to Hegel at the end, but sad I had to wait until the very end. Begs the question of who is capable of being a willful subject? Whose willful arm is good and whose is not?
October 31, 2021
I will always return to this one to remember what the arm asks of us.
October 14, 2024
I want to write like this!!
March 25, 2025
sara ahmed really knows how to deliver! this one was a bit harder for me than some of her other works but still a powerful read so much food for thought
April 17, 2025
4.5 stars
August 25, 2024
Beautiful phenomenological/existential queer feminist descriptions run long as numerous literary quotations are expounded upon.. and take a strange dip into identity politics. The non-committedness of this project could be exemplified by Ahmed’s praise of the Occupy Movement, the ultimate aims of achievements of which are unclear. At other times, professional anecdotes take up space for unclear reasons. In particular the odd “calling out” of fellow academic Gert Hekma by name, for a supposedly racist pronouncement which is never actually described. I guess we have to take her word for its egregiousness.
June 11, 2017
"What we become to withstand can become something that hardens us from others, those who might be closest, who might too have to survive the weather. We can damage each other in how we survive being damaged" (190)
Ahmed continues to be in equal measure dangerous, powerful, and essential.
Ahmed continues to be in equal measure dangerous, powerful, and essential.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews