Browsing by Subject "figuuri"

In this study, I approach happiness as a discursive practice and foucault’dian governance instead of empirical and objective phenomena. The basic assumption is that current western understanding of happiness is based on positive psychology that equates happiness as mental state. In this discourse, happy mind becomes the symbol of a good person and being happy a moral demand for self. In this happiness imperative, one must constantly labor on their personality, thoughts and feelings in the name of better self and life. The context of the study is postfeminist self-help-culture, which is understood as neoliberal and gendered governance. Thus, the demand of happiness is directed especially to young women. Besides the construct of happiness, the interest of the study also is the ideal happy subject which is constructed in the hegemonic happiness discourse. Thus the study explores how happiness, good life and ideal happy figure are constructed in the postfeminist self-help-culture. The data consist of seven wellness blogs. These are analyzed using discourse analytical method and feminist media study readings. Discourse is understood as a regime of knowledge and practice which orders human’s thoughts and actions in the world. Hereby the blogs are not understood as personal writings by the blogger but wider material performatives of the postfeminist self-help-culture. In the study results happiness showed as taken for granted goal of the life, but happiness imperative could also be read as cruel optimism when one becomes exhausted continuously working on themselves. Anyhow, the self-governance was justified by the promise of happiness. According to self-help ethos, positive thinking, cultivating one’s authenticity and continuous work on the self showed to be fundamental objects of happiness. The ideal happy subject also followed this individualistic logic. It showed to be a postfeminist figure, which have a masculine mind but feminine body. Although the hegemonic discourse of happiness claims to be based on the rhetoric of freedom and equality, I propose that its ideal subject follows gendered and heteronormative ideals. Hence many subjects and different ways to be and live are classified as unhappy and abnormal.