ABSTRACT
The complaint, upon a little reflection, proves to be an irresistible topic for analysis. This has everything to do with the feeling of dividedness that it tends to engender in any thoughtful interlocutor. More specifically, the complaint is argu-ably a meaningful component of any social member’s repertoire. At the same time, it has long faced much resistance, articulated as moaning and whining. Yet, despite this tension that pervades the very being of the complaint, it has little been theorized, whether by sociology, or the human sciences in general. It is pre-cisely that absence that this paper aims to satisfy.
Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end. […] an ignorance that requires no less knowledge to conceive it than does knowledge itself.
(Montaigne, 1970: 314)