Troubling (Un)Happiness: Finding Pathways Toward Liberatory Embodiment

ABSTRACT In this paper, we aim to trouble the territory of affect, specifically happiness, as a site of social reproduction in order to understand the liberatory possibilities that unhappiness offers. We follow the body through various paths of reproduction and explore the implications of a happiness imperative in the context of the body. What does it mean to be a happy body and what does that happiness serve? As two cis women who occupy multiple diverging positionalities, we offer a meditation on what it means to embody and to reject a reproduced happiness through our personal narratives. With a focus on race, body size, age, pregnancy, and queerness, we explore the possible pathways toward claiming the body and moving toward defiance and freedom. We close with reflections on how a reconsideration of (un)happiness and (un)happy bodies can influence a more liberatory psychoanalysis.