The "Duty" of Happiness, the Ambivalence of Melancholia
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Sara Ahmed's analysis of utilitarianism as a legitimating logic behind Western colonial adventures, as well as a foundational principle of modern capitalist states, is fascinating. Even if one can admit that utilitarianism is a useful framework for moral decision-making, why is it strictly happiness to which value is assigned? For all my experience learning about the horrors of colonialism and racism, I have rarely questioned happiness as the ultimate good for which to strive. Sure, something like decolonization may be bloody, but surely it works towards the end of some theoretical "easy," happy future existence, right? This kind of aversion to conflict as a part of everyday life is very much the bread-and-butter of the kinds of environments in which I was raised, and it seems symptomatic of the broader West as well. Takeaway? Melancholia can in fact be a positive force, just as any "negative" emotion can give us information about what's really going on, and what we really want as people. It can also be a negative force, as we see in Eswaran's piece analyzing Mississippi Masala. The character Jay feels very deeply the loss of his childhood friend and of the country in which he was raised. But unwilling or unable to mourn and thus "get over" those losses and, crucially, the proximity to whiteness which they represent, he fills that void by attempting to exert control over a Black man in his new country of residence. This is in stark contrast to the example of the father in Bend It Like Beckham, who honors the so-called "duty" towards happiness by "getting over" his own immigrant trauma. Surely we all want Jasminder to be able to play soccer and follow her dreams, but this happiness is also tied up in a larger discourse of melancholia as a problem to be solved quickly and easily, when for many it is not so cut-and-dry. For Nitin Sawhney it is an unresolved longing: "I can't feel... I can't reach across a thousand years..."