It’s More Fun in the Philippines: Positive Affects and the Post-Colonial Condition

Abstract

Abstract. This research note outlines ideas and maps out the critical context of the author's current research project entitled "It's More Fun in the Philippines: Positive Affects and the Post-Colonial Condition." It also engages with recent literature from the expanding field of critical happiness studies. This project, envisioned to be a book-length study, explores the enabling as well as the obstructive capacities of so-called positive affects in imagining and realising an affirmative and sustainable cultural and socio-political practice within conditions of postcoloniality. In the process, it bridges several disciplines -in particular, Postcolonial Studies, Affect Theory, Critical/Cultural Theory and Gender Studies -and also aims to analyse a variegated body of philosophy, literature and cinema.