_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is (...) deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

This paper takes a sideways look at the controversial topic of educational assessment, raising the question: what place should the success/failure distinction have in an effective and humane educational system? Though the experience of failure may undermine the self-esteem that is conducive to learning, its possibility is clearly important educationally. Instead of asking whether teachers should be truthful about children’s achievements or dishonestly promote their self-esteem, we need to recognise a certain logical indeterminacy about what young children can do. Given (...) this, it is reasonable to presume in favour of many of their capacities rather than against them, for this is how children develop the confidence to act. This includes the confidence to fail as well as the confidence to succeed. It is argued that both are crucial for learning. (shrink)