The Politics of Good Feeling

Abstract

This paper explores ‘the politics of good feeling’ with specific reference to debates about multiculturalism and immigration. The paper considers how certain bodies are seen as the origin of bad feeling, as getting in the way of public happiness, exploring the negative affective value of the figures of the feminist kill-joy, unhappy queer and melancholic migrant. Drawing on a reading of the film Bend it Like Beckham, the paper explores how the would-becitizen who embraces the national game is rewarded with happiness. The migrant who refuses to integrate becomes an unhappy object for the nation, as the cause of unhappiness, terror and insecurity. The film participates in a wider discourse that reads public speech about racism as melancholic, as the refusal to let go of suffering. The paper explores how this conversion between unhappy racism and multicultural happiness takes place, and in so doing, offers a critique of what we would call ‘the affirmative turn’.