Sara Ahmed (guest editor)
How can we understand the recent turn to happiness within economics, psychology
and social policy? To what do we appeal when we appeal to happiness? This
special issue offers new perspectives on happiness. Rather than assuming
happiness is what is good, as a shared object of human desire, contributors
consider how happiness is involved in making things good. Drawing on readings
of therapy culture, film and literature, the essays collected here consider
how happiness works as an aspiration, promise, ideal, emotion, temporality
and habit. Contributors discuss how happiness involves specific images of
the good life, as a form of world-making, and reflects on the intimacy between
happiness and power.
Contributors:
Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Lisa Blackman, Rowan Boyson, Claire Colebrook,
Carrie Hamilton, Janet Harbord, Vincent Lloyd, Heather Love, Fiona Nicoll
Cover image: Still from the movie Les 400 coups, by François Truffaut, 1959
Contents:
Sara Ahmed Editorial: The Happiness Turn
Lisa Blackman Is Happiness Contagious?
Lauren Berlant Cruel Optimism: On Marx, Loss and the Senses
Heather Love Compulsory Happiness and Queer Existence
Carrie Hamilton Happy Memories
Claire Colebrook Narrative Happiness and the Meaning of Life
Fiona Nicoll The Problematic Joys of Gambling: Subjects in a State
Sara Ahmed Multiculturalism and the Promise of Happiness
REVIEWS
Rowan Boyson Walking Back to Happiness
Vincent Lloyd Resisting Sophistry
Janet Harbord Cinematic Hat Tricks
BOOKNOTES
Pollyanna Ruiz, Nils Lindahl Elliot
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |