Against Flourishing: Wellbeing as biopolitics, and the psychoanalytic alternative

This article critically analyzes what is at stake in the recent translation of the term ‘happiness ’ into the inter-related terms ‘well-being ’ and ‘flourishing ’ within Happiness Studies. Focussing on the work of Martin Seligman, the article argues that the category of ‘flourishing ’ in particular highlights Happiness Studies and positive psychology as a new, neoliberal interpretation of utilitarianism. This is supported with reference to Michel Foucault’s late lectures at the Collège de France on the connections between neoliberalism and the direct political administration of life that he termed ‘biopolitics’, a concept which explains the interweaving of health and happiness in today’s dominant therapeutic cultures. Finally, the article attempts to outline a radical alternative to the biopolitical notion of ‘flourishing ’ by appealing to psychoanalysis, specifically Lacanian psychoanalysis- its critique of consumer happiness, but also its clinical commitment to working transformatively with unhappiness