This essay resists steering an unhappy third-way between avowedly “critical” approaches to happiness (Freud, Žižek) and more “positive” perspectives (Benjamin, Badiou), and instead turns the tables. In the first half, focusing upon Thomas Mann’s short story “The Will to Happiness,” it examines neurotic hedonism —a more sophisticated variant of the hysteric’s old game of deriving satisfaction from unsatisfied desire itself—and some of the “necessary fictions” which undergird it. In the second half, it explores what it might mean, at least in theory, to move beyond neurotic hedonism by embracing a different perspective: dialectical pessimism . This pessimistic outlook is allied to the activity of critique , but it also requires a specific conception of the self; namely, the self as the “manure” (Gramsci) of history. How can the very idea of happiness be rethought from this “excremental” perspective?

中文翻译：

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排泄的幸福：从神经质享乐主义到辩证悲观主义

这篇文章拒绝在公开的“批判性”幸福方法（弗洛伊德，Žižek）和更“积极”的观点（本杰明，巴迪欧）之间转向不愉快的第三种方式，而是扭转局面。在前半部分，以托马斯·曼的短篇小说《幸福的意志》为中心，探讨了神经质的享乐主义——歇斯底里从不满足的欲望本身中获得满足的古老游戏的一种更复杂的变体——以及一些“必要的虚构”。它。在后半部分，它探讨了超越神经质享乐主义的意义，至少在理论上，通过采用不同的视角：辩证悲观主义。这种悲观的观点与批判的活动有关，但它也需要一个特定的自我概念；即，自我作为历史的“肥料”（葛兰西）。