For this first post assignment, I would like you to address two tasks/questions after reading Ahmed’s “Happiness and Queer Politics.”

• Ahmed examines in great detail the ways in which happiness and unhappiness shape the promises and pitfalls of queer life. Analyze a point or argument that Ahmed makes in “Happiness and Queer Politics” that you find particularly convincing, surprising, problematic, or interesting in some other way. After explaining Ahmed’s idea, consider how it has confirmed, transformed, or problematized your understanding of happiness and the ways in which it shapes queers in particular and society in general.
• Ahmed ends her essay by reflecting on the potential for UNhappiness to enrich queer life and politics. She writes: “Queer politics might radicalize freedom as the freedom to be unhappy. The freedom to be unhappy would be the freedom to live a life that deviates from the paths of happiness, wherever that deviation takes us. It would mean the freedom to cause unhappiness by acts of deviation. Queer enjoyment can thus be expressed as an embodiment of the freedom to be unhappy.” What are some ways, politically or in our day-to-day lives, that one might promote, “the freedom to be unhappy”? In your opinion, do you think that such a political project is desireable? Are there any risks associated with this?

Please address these two questions together or separately in at least two full, well-thought-out paragraphs.

Due on TUESDAY, September 12th, at 5 PM. (I.E. BEFORE CLASS!)