A happy policy

Abstract

This chapter discusses the first chronological shock that led to the present, peculiar structuring of the cultural circuits of happiness in Anglo-American modernity: its nineteenth-century embracement at a macro-political level. As contended in the previous chapter, the societal strive toward happiness did not occur in grand sweeping strokes, usurping the prominent hegemonies of before. Epochal, mythic shifts in mass-discursive, cultural phenomena are rather rhizomatic, their expressive arrays of actors, objects and templates developing from a near inexhaustible catalog of causes (recall Stromberg, 1981: 12). Some of the varied yet related historical, philosophical and political developments which seem most amenable shall thus be proffered to provide a sustainable history of the present (recall Foucault, 1991: 31), to establish both that happiness is embedded in the dominant macro-political philosophy of modern Anglo-American society and why this is so.

Can political theory take this interest in happiness seriously?

(Duncan, 2007: 86)