That balance in academic work is both rare and refreshing.

Thus, the work tries to maintain one foot in political economics, and the other firmly in the humanities. This development alone is worthy of praise: it is even more impressive given that the author avoids the temptation of many scholars of IPE and instead maintains that this work is, at its core, about human lives and their relation to economic forces, rather than about a-personal humans who could be mistaken for sanitized points of data rather than our friends, family, and selves. With that said, Lynne begins to develop an interesting methodological tack in this work: the author attempts to, and largely succeeds at, placing happiness within the broader intellectual paradigm of international political economics (IPE), linking them to debt and the creation, and breaking, of economic norms under late capitalism. Opining about happiness and love, or their relative lack, is, of course, nothing new in the realms of literature, philosophy, art, or basically any other human endeavor. Broadly speaking, the work seeks to take a brutally honest, if sometimes emotionally difficult, look at our lives under late capitalism in an attempt to work out why so many of us lack happiness in our lives. Segal thus spends many pages defining the concepts and contexts of love, joy, happiness and a few other relevant ideas that will be covered more shortly in a general summary. In general terms, the work can be seen as something of a diagnosis for the general lack of happiness in the modern era, in particular the increasing trends of depression, anxiety, and other sorts of melancholia that appear to be endemic to contemporary life in capitalist, democratic countries.

Radical Happiness is more than worth a read for those concerned about the state of themselves and others in the world, both inside and outside of the scholarly literatures cited by the veteran feminist scholar, though it does have a few rather curious blind spots in terms of other relevant philosophies of love. To this end, the work is a refreshing take on, and situation of, love and happiness into several literatures and spheres that gives readers a lot to chew on intellectually and personally. Namely, the work seeks to tackle the concept of happiness in its definition, application, and increasing lack of presence in most of our lives. Lynne Segal’s recent work addresses some of the most personal problems of everyday people, and the vast majority of scholars living under the conditions of late capitalism.

Lynne segal radical happiness