ABSTRACT
Cultural scholar Sarah Ahmed’s (2010) critique of the “promises of happiness” is crucial to education. Through a phenomenological approach, firmly rooted in feminist theory, Ahmed reveals how an individual’s feelings and desires might deviate from prevailing cultural happiness narratives, or “promises of happiness”, generating unfortunate emotional consequences. As education plays an important part in promoting such narratives, Ahmed thus demonstrates the importance of taking students’ affective responses seriously and that we need to question how we as educators relate to feelings. Despite her critical voice, Ahmed nevertheless points out a possible path for such a discussion, I would argue; “Unhappiness might offer a pedagogic lesson on the limits of the promise of happiness” (p. 217), she writes. “To kill joy […] is to open a life, to make room for life, to make room for possibility, for chance” (p. 20). With these quotes as starting points, and with an approach to education emphasising its fundamental “norm problem” as well as the importance of “the pedagogical relation”, this chapter will explore whether and how unhappiness might contribute to our enduring search for a (more) just education.
