Maria Lopiccolo

Professor Blackman

ENC 1101

September 10, 2023

Analysis Essay

Alice Walker, an American novelist, once said, “Don’t wait around for other people to be

happy for you. Any happiness you have get you’ve got to make for yourself.” This is sage advice

for anyone to live by, but it is in direct contrast to what many societies and cultures adhere. In

the article “Happiness in Queer Politics”, Sara Ahmed talks about how happiness is conditional;

our happiness is not made by us for ourselves but instead it is directly to the happiness of others

and does not take into consideration that happiness is a subjective concept.

The purpose of “Happiness and Queer Politics” is revealing a conditional cycle of

happiness. The idea is that “I’m happy if you’re happy” – an unattainable happiness that does not

let you be happy unless the person you want to be happy, is happy. The speaker is Sara Ahmed,

and her audience is society. Ahmed gets her point across well in both stories, with the societies’

ideology of happiness, whether it is being married or being straight. I believe what could have

made this article better is describing in what society and culture these stories took place. This

would have added more background and context into the stories, allowing the reader to

understand the mindset of the characters and, therefore, allow him or her to come from a place of

better understanding and/or empathy. “Happiness and Queer Politics” fit the web of rhetoric in a

multitude of ways. For example, the article gave the audience context through which time period

these stories were written. The time period is important because there is a distinct difference

between the family societal norms in the 1700s versus the norms in modern day America. In
2

Lopiccolo
addition, the article spoke to the audience through sharing values, views and feelings of the

children and parents.

In Nancy Garden’s novel, Annie on my Mind, Ahmed used a quotation, “The father’s

speech act creates the very affective state of unhappiness that is imagined to be the inevitable

consequence if the daughter’s decision” (Ahmed 68). The state of unhappiness is created by the

father’s statement that she cannot be happy without a husband and kids, or a real family. You

would trace the argument back by the quote, “I want you to be happy in other ways, too, as your

mother is to have a husband and children…” (68). The father compared his daughter to her

mother by saying her mother is happy because she has a husband and children. He felt that his

daughter could only be happy if she lived the life that he and wife determined would make her

happy. They were basing her happiness on their idea of happiness. The daughter became

unhappy only when the father told her she could not be happy with how she was living her life.

He felt that her unhappiness came from her being queer and not the fact that he was reflecting his

unhappiness onto her. The father’s speech is talking about how he wants his daughter to be

happy, not realizing her view of happiness is not the same as his view of happiness.

The role Rousseau’s Émile played in the development of Ahmed’s idea of happiness was

how Ahmed illustrated how a person’s desires and ideas were downplayed and suppressed about

marriage, who they wanted to marry, or even if they wanted to marry. This was done because

they wanted to make their parents happy, or they wanted to be accepted by society. The children

must give their parents what they desire, to be good, then in exchange this makes the parents

happy (Ahmed 66). “This idea is called ‘conditional happiness’ when a person’s happiness is
3

Lopiccolo
made conditional on another person’s happiness” (66). This leads to when a person puts another

person’s happiness before their own. Therefore, the happiness becomes a shared object (66).

Happiness, like many other things in life, is a relative word. The definition of happiness

is defined by many different things, as is the value of happiness. “Happiness and Queer Politics”

illustrates the way that different societies and culture value happiness; it illustrates the perpetual

circle of people depending on others for defining and providing happiness instead of, as Alice

Walker suggested, making happiness for oneself.

4

Lopiccolo
Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. “Happiness and Queer Politics” Pursuing Happiness, 2nd Edition, Edited by Parfitt,

M., Skorczewski, D, 2020. pp. 65–72.

Walker, A. Happiness quotes - brainyquote. https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/happiness-

quotes