Optimism, Happiness and other Cruelties from a Conference on Sex/Gender Norms

Abstract

In addition to a deliberately brief overview of the conference and its contents, this analytical outlook focuses on affect in its interwovenness of subject and object and examines the question how one could, particularly at a conference on sex/gender norms, deliberate, reflect and discuss – or not – the force of affects for these same sex/gender norms. How and where is affect accorded space, where does it claim space itself? The outlook discusses how, by means of the powerful emotions of ‘happiness’ and ‘optimism’ as forces of affect, some bodies are included and others excluded, and how, in revealing the cruelty of promises of happiness and conference optimism, such cruelties can be overcome or turned to productive effect.