ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that interdisciplinary engagement with non-normative cultural representation enables not only challenges to the received incompatibility between happiness and disability but also departures from the subjective wellbeing defined by normative positivisms. Happiness and happiness studies may seem like the most innocent of subjects to explore but neither is straightforward. A point from happiness studies for tutors and students to ponder is that the 'shock reveals the expectation of where happiness should be found'. The shock of happiness in representations of disability is sometimes accompanied by explanatory notions of compensatory powers, something problematised in disability studies before and since the publication of George Sava's novel , but a close reading reveals a number of details worth emphasising. In so departing from happiness-cure synonymy the non-normative representations problematise the idea that happiness and disability fall either side of the normative divide to which happiness studies and disability studies often allude.
