This article unravels the workings of happiness as integral to knowledge capitalism’s ‘emotionality of rule’ from the perspectives of two cohorts of ‘knowledge workers’: digital creatives and academics. It analyses the ways in which the study participants make work a site of personal fulfilment and happiness as they strive to become ‘happy’ labour subjects. Despite their different worklife trajectories, both cohorts appeal to the promise of happy entrepreneurial productivism. This promise attaches workers to the privileges of knowledge work in ways that downplay its costs. However, the dominance of knowledge capitalism’s happy labour subject is challenged by the backgrounded significance of work’s social benefits in their accounts. As such, this article argues that the individualised depoliticisation of contemporary ‘knowledge work’ can be challenged by re-valorising work’s social contributions.

本文从两个“知识工作者”群体：数字创意者和学者的角度，揭示了作为知识资本主义“规则情感”不可或缺的幸福的运作方式。它分析了研究参与者在努力成为“快乐”劳动主体时如何使工作成为个人成就感和幸福的场所。尽管他们的工作生活轨迹不同，但这两个群体都对快乐创业生产主义的承诺有吸引力。这一承诺以低估其成本的方式将工人附加到知识工作的特权上。然而，知识资本主义幸福劳动主体的主导地位受到了他们账户中工作的社会福利的背景重要性的挑战。像这样，