What is the true meaning of happiness? Lynne Segal explores the radical potential of being together Why are we so obsessed by the pursuit of happiness? With new ways to measure contentment we are told that we have a right to individual joy. But at what cost? In an age of increasing individualism, we have never been more alone and miserable. But what if the true nature of happiness can only be found in others? In Radical Happiness, leading feminist thinker Lynne Segal believes that we have lost the art of radical happiness— the art of transformative, collective joy. She shows that only in the revolutionary potential of coming together it is that we can come to understand the powers of flourishing. Radical Happiness is a passionate call for the re-discovery of the political and emotional joy that emerge when we learn to share our lives together.
What happens when angry young rebels become wary older women, ageing in a leaner, meaner time: a time which exalts only the ‘new’, in a ruling orthodoxy daily disparaging all it portrays as the ‘old’? Delving into her own life and those of others who left their mark on it, Lynne Segal tracks through time to consider her generation of female dreamers, what formed them, how they left their mark on the world, where they are now in times when pessimism seems never far from what remains of public life. Searching for answers, she studies her family history, sexual awakening, ethnic belonging, as well as the peculiarities of the time and place that shaped her own political journeys, with all their urgency, significance, pleasures and absurdities.
A manifesto of sexual liberation, from the leading feminist thinker. Is heterosexual sex inherently damaging to women? This is the central question of Straight Sex, Lynne Segal’s account of twentyfive years of feminist thinking on sexuality. Covering the thought of sixties-era sexual liberationists, alongside the ensuing passionate debates over sex and love within feminist and lesbian communities, Segal covers certain shifts toward greater sexual conservatism in the eighties. Straight Sex examines an array of issues, including sex as a subversive activity, the “liberated orgasm,” sex advice literature, gender uncertainties, queer politics, anti-pornography campaigns and the rise of the moral right.