A review by yourvillainoriginstory
Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy by Lynne Segal

5.0

Honestly the perfect pairing for “Pleasure Activism”, and “The Cultural Politics of Emotion”, more academic and rooted in history /theory than the former, yet far more accessibly readable than the latter. Each of these three texts speak so well to the ideas of what pleasure, joy, happiness, and at its base what even entails emotions, as in how do we define what emotions are, and what are the political, economic, etc motivations behind these definitions. They trace lineages, histories, constructs, restrictions, etc, through anti racist, feminist, queer, and decolonial lenses. Segal in particular offers a sweeping history of the terms and ideas behind these concepts of joy and happiness, stretching back through western history. Perhaps its only short-coming is that for being as in depth as it is, it holds a somewhat myopic scope, focusing almost exclusively on the history of happiness and joy from continental Europe, and occasionally from socialist movements internationally. That said, to do an internationally applicable project of this depth would take countless volumes! Also, it could have done more to incorporate madness and disability (making one think that “Care Work” or other such disability justice texts might play an important role in the conversation with the aforementioned texts), though I do think that the text offers important contributions to the work of madness studies (I incorporated it heavily into my mad research).