Happiness: A Cultural Study

这项研究探讨了幸福是如何作为一种承诺，引导我们走向某些目标，就好像它们提供了美好生活的必要成分。幸福的承诺——如果你这样做，那么幸福就会随之而来——是什么让某些事情看起来“有希望”。这项研究将通过考虑幸福如何成为我们追求的“什么”，从而指导故事和行动，来探索幸福作为一种叙事和情感是如何起作用的。“我只是想让你快乐”是什么意思？什么是“幸福”？幸福是如何“公正”的？针对最近经济学、心理学和政治学领域的“幸福转向”，这项研究将提供一种文化方法来研究幸福，而不是问“什么是幸福？”，或者“我们如何衡量幸福”，而是“幸福有什么作用？”以及“关于幸福的观念是如何塑造一个连贯的世界的？”该研究探索了“幸福新科学”的工作方式，以将某些生活方式作为社会理想为基础，创造出美好生活的特定形象。这项研究并不是假设幸福仅仅描述了什么是好的，而是考虑了幸福是如何与“制造商品”联系在一起的。例如，我将探讨幸福是如何被认为存在于生命历程中的某些点（如婚姻和生育），这就是为什么“点”作为社会理想是有效的。通过研究，我将探讨异性恋和家庭是如何体现幸福的，仿佛居住在这些形式中就能让你获得美好的生活。该研究还考虑了幸福是如何被描述为遵循特定的政治理想的，比如多元文化主义，而多元文化主义反过来又承诺克服各种形式的不幸福。它考虑了某些生活是如何被认为是不快乐的，因为缺乏让人快乐的“东西”，比如奇怪的生活。通过分析一系列叙述中坏感觉和好感觉之间的“转换点”，我将提出以下问题：谁会给谁带来快乐？坏情绪是如何转化成好的呢？谁承诺克服不快乐？对一些人来说，被视为这一承诺的承担者意味着什么？在提出这些问题时，该研究将通过揭露幸福承诺的“不愉快影响”来调查女权主义者、酷儿和反种族主义政治是如何起作用的。为了研究幸福的作用，这项研究将包括仔细阅读最近的“幸福科学”文献，以及媒体上的相关评论。这项研究将把这个“幸福档案”与黑人、酷儿和女权主义者的档案放在一起，这些档案探索了存在于被描述为美好生活的轮廓之外的生活。这些档案至少在某种程度上可以被描述为不快乐，因为它们涉及的文本提供了对现有生活方式的社会批评，并体现了一种反对特定幸福主张的斗争形式。通过探索某些人物的情感力量——杀戮快乐的女权主义者、愤怒的黑人妇女、不快乐的酷儿——研究将检验这些档案如何挑战幸福与美好之间的一致性。例如，女权主义档案包含了许多关于不快乐的叙述，这些不快乐被“快乐的家庭主妇”的形象所掩盖。关注女权主义者、酷儿和黑人文化实践中不快乐和快乐的结局，我将探讨对不快乐的政治身份所隐含的幸福的批评。我对幸福的文化政治的思考将集中在伤害的历史以及伤害与对更美好未来的希望之间的关系上。当我关注一些关于幸福的叙述所带来的不快乐的影响时，我也关注一些关于不快乐的叙述所带来的快乐的影响，以及它们如何开启了另一种可能被视为美好生活的模式。

This research explores how happiness works as a promise that directs us towards certain objects, as if they provide the necessary ingredients for a good life. The very promise of happiness - if you do this, then happiness will follow - is what makes certain things seem 'promising'. The research will explore how happiness works as a narrative and emotion, by considering how happiness becomes 'the what' that we aim for, which directs story and action. What does it mean to say: 'I just want you to be happy?' What is 'just happiness'? And how is happiness 'just'?Responding to the recent 'happiness turn' within economics, psychology and political science, this research will offer a cultural approach to happiness by asking not 'what is happiness?', or 'how can we measure happiness', but 'what does happiness do?' and 'how do ideas about happiness shape what coheres as a world?' The research explores the ways in which the ' new science of happiness' works to produce particular images of what counts as a good life, based on taking certain ways of living as social ideals. Rather than assuming happiness simply describes what is good, the research will consider how happiness is involved in the 'making of goods'. For example, I will explore how happiness is presumed to reside within certain points within the life course (such as marriage and reproduction), which is what makes the 'points' affective as social ideals. Through the research, I will explore how heterosexuality and the family come to embody happiness, as if inhabiting these forms will enable you to have access to a good life. The research also considers how happiness is narrated as following from specific political ideals, such as multiculturalism, which in turn promise to overcome forms of unhappiness. It considers how certain lives are presumed to be unhappy, as lacking the 'things' that make people happy, such as queer lives. By analysing the 'conversion points' between bad and good feeling within a range of narratives, I will pose the questions: who is seen to bring happiness to whom? How do bad feelings get converted into good ones? Who promises to overcome unhappiness and what does it mean for some to be seen as the bearers of this promise? In posing these questions, the research will investigate how feminist, queer and anti-racist politics work by exposing the the 'unhappy effects' of the promise of happiness.In order to investigate what happiness does, this research will involve close readings of the recent 'science of happiness' literature, and related commentaries in the press. The research will place this 'happiness archive' alongside a black, queer and feminist archive, which explores lives that exist outside the contours of what has been described as the good life. These archives could be described at least in part as unhappy, insofar as they involve texts that offer social critiques of existing ways of living and which embody a form of struggle against particular claims about happiness. By exploring the affective power of certain figures - the kill joy feminist, the angry black woman, the unhappy queer - the research will examine how this archive challenges the alignment between happiness and the good. For example, the feminist archive involves many narratives about the unhappiness that is concealed by the image of the 'happy housewife'. Focusing on unhappy and happy endings within feminist, queer and black cultural practices, I will explore the critiques of happiness implicit in embracing an unhappy political identity. My consideration of the cultural politics of happiness will focus on histories that hurt and the relation between hurt and hope for a better future. While I focus on the unhappy effects of some narratives of happiness, I also focus on the happy effects of some narratives of unhappiness, and how they open up alternative models of what might count as a good life.