(Un)happiness and social justice education: ethical, political and pedagogic lessons

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper aims: (1) to draw attention to relational and political understandings of happiness in education discourses and their implications for remedying racial and social inequalities and suffering, and (2) to illustrate how unhappiness and suffering might offer valuable ethical, political and pedagogic lessons on the limits of the promise of happiness in social justice education. The analysis draws on Sara Ahmed’s work to theorise multiculturalism and racial equality as ‘happy objects’, namely, as objects towards which good feelings are directed and bad feelings are rejected. In particular, the paper analyses how those discourses operate to fabricate particular meanings for (un)happiness, especially in relation to how they address racial and social inequalities and suffering more generally. Bringing the differentiated affects of individuals and groups into the frame of analysis of (un)happiness in social justice education paves the way for challenging the happinisation of education that we are still witnessing.