Unhappy Beginnings

<p>This book offers the analysis of a selection of North American texts that dismantle and resist normative frames through the resignification of concepts such as unhappiness precarity failure and vulnerability. The chapters bring to the fore how those potentially negative elements can be refigured as ambivalent sites of resistance and social bonding. Following Sara Ahmed’s rereading of happiness other authors such as Judith Butler Wendy Brown Jack Halberstam Lauren Berlant or Henry Giroux are mobilized to interrogate films memoirs and novels that deal with precarity alienation and inequality. The monograph contributes to enlarging the archives of unhappiness by changing the focus from prescribed norms and happy endings to unruly practices and unhappy beginnings. As the different contributors show unhappiness precarity vulnerability or failure can be harnessed to illuminate ways of navigating the world and framing society that do not necessarily conform to the script of happiness—whatever that means.</p>