"The Promise of Happiness" is a provocative cultural critique of
the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our
desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of
others: "I just want you to be happy"; "I'm happy if you're happy."
Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed
reveals the affective and moral work performed by the "happiness
duty," the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in
that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we
will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise
that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others.
Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the
right way.
Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from
classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through
seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions,
eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and
nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist,
antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used
to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes
unhappiness. Reading novels and films including" Mrs. Dalloway,"
"The Well of Loneliness," "Bend It Like Beckham," and "Children of
Men," Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and
are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular
objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer,
the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her
readings she raises critical questions about the moral order
imposed by the injunction to be happy.
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