Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Grant Watson

Thesis: Desiring to live Happily?

July 2025

Abstract

The thesis explores the theme of the desire to live happily through a pedagogical, philosophical, and autobiographical analysis, structured into three main chapters: Living, Desiring and Happily. The author, drawing from personal experiences of alienation and suffering within a neoliberal and colonialist culture, investigates how Western pedagogy (“negative pedagogy”) fragments the body and separates desire from pleasure, producing isolated individuals disconnected from themselves and others.

Through references to Spinoza, Deleuze, Foucault, and others, the text proposes a pedagogy of encounter based on reconnecting body, desire, and pleasure, and on the idea of education as a practice of love and liberation. The author shares concrete experiences, such as workshops by the collective Šumma Ālu and the Desidumanzia project, aimed at decolonizing desire and building alternative communities.

The final chapter describes practices carried out in the past year useful for creating a utopian condominium as a model of generative coexistence, where common goods and human relationships replace the logic of private property. The thesis concludes with a letter to the future, emphasizing the importance of creating alternative economic and educational systems rooted in ethics and shared joy.

Author: Ariell Zéphyr