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Author Ahmed, Sara, 1969-

Title The promise of happiness / Sara Ahmed.

Publication Info. Durham [NC] : Duke University Press, 2010.

Item Status

Location Call No. Status OPAC Message Public Note Gift Note
 Moore Stacks  B187.H3 A36 2010    Available  ---
Description x, 315 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-299) and index.
Contents Introduction: why happiness, why now? -- Happy objects -- Feminist killjoys -- Unhappy queers -- Melancholic migrants -- Happy futures -- Conclusion: happiness, ethics, possibility.
Summary "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 sometimes 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 are challenged by, and themselves challenge, 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."--Back cover.
Subject Happiness.
Happiness.
Social norms.
Social norms.
Social control.
Social control.
Soziale Norm.
Social norms.
ISBN 9780822346661 (cloth ; alkaline paper)
0822346664 (cloth ; alkaline paper)
9780822347255 (paperback ; alkaline paper)
0822347253 (paperback ; alkaline paper)