Joy, laughter and 'radical happiness' in the British Women's Liberation Movement

妇女解放运动是一场情绪化政治激进主义的爆发。女权主义印刷媒体和活动家的个人证词清楚地表达了对这场运动至关重要的深度情感和“情感漩涡”(Waters 2016：451)。他们因公义的愤怒而燃烧，但也是快乐的，充满了爱和欢笑。在《激进的幸福》(2017)一书中，女权主义活动家、学者琳恩·西格尔呼吁重新调动人们的快乐情绪，进行集体抗议。她把这称为“喜悦神奇的革命力量”(2017：XIV)。但是，喜悦和幸福在口碑中占了多大的比重呢？它的威力有多大，它的局限性是什么，它对文化和政治抗议意味着什么？该项目将通过对英国档案馆，包括妇女图书馆、黑人文化档案馆、格拉斯哥妇女图书馆和北方和南方女权主义档案馆的来源分析来探索这些问题。这项研究将提出的主要问题是：1)幸福感、喜悦和笑声在多大程度上以及以什么方式形成了英国民运？2)喜悦和幽默在多大程度上挑战了社会规范，成为一种强大的政治“工具”？3)在创造一种强大的姐妹情谊方面，幸福和愤怒对这场运动是否与愤怒一样相关和重要，政治激进主义的持续和政治挑战对这场运动的扩散？我还将通过考察运动内外对喜悦的这种倾诉的反应来探索多样性的问题，以及幸福感和幸福感在WLM中的意义如何随着时间的推移而变化。我将考虑WLM中不同的女性群体，包括来自不同种族、文化和阶级背景以及性取向的女性，是如何经历集体快乐的。以前的工作已经考虑了WLM中情绪的重要性(Waters 2016，Rees 2010)，重点关注WLM中愤怒的意义和力量；但是Bruley(2013：726)描述了WLM中体验到的快乐和参与的特征的“巨大的情感爆发”？这些情绪使英国女权运动以愤怒为主导的简单化叙事复杂化，同时将女权主义者描绘成总是非理性和憎恨男性的厌女主义者。对喜悦和幸福在这一运动中的重要性的研究，将对这一叙事提出挑战，并为这一时期的分析史带来全新的视角。WLM也经常被认为太白人和太中产阶级，与今天的抗议活动无关。然而，这是为了掩盖运动中人的复杂性和多样性(Thomlinson，2012)。通过获取情感和情感体验，这种分析可以揭示塑造WLM并继续形成今天的抗议运动的亲和力和矛盾性。我将借鉴社会学家黛博拉·古尔德(2010)在她对20世纪80年代艾滋病激进主义的研究中所做的工作和采取的方法。她的分析认为，情感和情感感觉是提供对“人的存在”的多方面理解的核心，在分析被认为更理性和更具认知性的东西时，这种理解可能会被遮蔽或误解(2010：17)。此外，我还将借鉴女权主义理论家的研究成果，包括萨拉·艾哈迈德(2004)和克莱尔·海明斯(2011)。他们关心的是力量如何在感觉和影响中循环，以及情感的潜力，以允许进入一个内在的、情感的和具体化的维度。他们的方法赋予情感以一种知识形式的价值，这种知识“与感觉和感觉的身体世界是分不开的”(Ahmed 2004：171)。正如古尔德(2010)对ACT UP的分析一样，这些方法可以揭示女性在WLM中的联系、动机和经历。

The Women's Liberation Movement was an explosion of emotional political activism. The feminist print media and personal testimonies from activists articulate a depth of feeling and "swirl of emotion" (Waters 2016:451) that was central to the movement. They burned with a righteous anger but were also joyous, full of love and laughter. In Radical Happiness (2017), feminist activist and academic Lynne Segal calls for a return to the mobilising of joyous emotions in collective protest. She terms this "the miraculous revolutionary power of joy" (2017:xiv). But how much did joy and happiness form a part of the WLM? How powerful was it, what were its limitations and what did it mean for the cultural and political protest? This project will explore these questions through a source-based analysis in British archives, including the Women's Library, the Black Cultural Archives, Glasgow Women's Library and the Feminist Archives North and South. The main questions this research will ask are: 1) To what extent and in what ways did a sense of happiness, joy and laughter form the British WLM? 2) To what extent did joy and humour challenge societal norms and become a powerful political "tool"? 3) Was happiness as relevant and significant to the movement as anger in the creation of a powerful sense of sisterhood, the sustaining of political activism and the diffusing of political challenges to the movement?I will also explore questions of diversity by examining the reaction to such outpourings of joy from those inside and outside the movement as well as how feelings of happiness and the significance it held in the WLM changed over time. I will consider how different groups of women in the WLM, including from different racial, cultural and class backgrounds and sexual orientations, experienced the collective feelings of joy.Previous work has considered the importance of emotions in the WLM (Waters 2016, Rees 2010) with a focus on the significance and strength of anger in the WLM; but what of Bruley's (2013: 726) description of the "tremendous outburst of emotion" that was experienced as joyous and also characterised involvement in the WLM? These emotions complicate the simplistic narrative of the British WLM as dominated by anger, alongside the misogynist portrayal of feminists as always irrational and man-hating. This research on the importance of joy and happiness in the movement will challenge this narrative and bring a radically new perspective to the analytical history of the period. The WLM is also often considered too white and too middle class and not relevant to protest today. However this is to obscure the complexity and diversity of people in the movement (Thomlinson 2012). In accessing affective and emotional experiences, this analysis can reveal the affinities and contradictions that shaped the WLM and continue to form protest movements today. I will draw on the work and approach of sociologist Deborah Gould (2010) in her study on AIDS activism during the 1980s. Her analysis views emotional and affective sensations as central to providing a multi-faceted understanding of "human beingness" that may be obscured or misunderstood in an analysis of what is considered to be more rational and cognitive (2010:17). Further to this, I will draw on the work of feminist theorists, including Sara Ahmed (2004) and Clare Hemmings (2011). They are concerned with how power circulates through feeling and affect and with the potential of affect to allow access to a visceral, emotional and embodied dimension. Their approaches give value to emotions as a form of knowledge that "cannot be separated from the bodily world of feelings and sensations" (Ahmed 2004:171). As with Gould's (2010) analysis of ACT UP, these approaches can reveal much about the connections, motivations and experiences of women within the WLM.