Writing the "Good Life"

The aim of this issue of Canada & Beyond is to analyze narratives of Canada that unravel the notions of the good life (Ahmed), cruel optimism (Berlant),ordinary affects and the unexpected (Stewart). The turn to affects writes back to the neoliberal vision of contemporary society, subjectivity and their representations.The complexity of affects and the emergence of more fluid and mobile affective clusters show how life events can be interpreted as interconnected encounters, and how they represent interrelated systems of lives. In light of this, the contributors to this issue have examined from different perspectives how these notions and possibilities articulate new places of critical potential in contemporary cultures and writings of Canada.