Introducing DisHappiness: a typology on the intersection between disability and happiness

Javier Monforte is an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Education and Sport at the University of València, Spain. His research takes a qualitative approach and focuses on the meanings and experiences of physical activity in disabled people. He received the ECR award by the International Society of Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise and the Young Investigator award by the European Federation of Adapted Physical Activity. he has authored several book chapters and journal articles on critical and posthuman disability studies.

Over the last months, I have been designing a research project that will bond critical happiness studies and critical disability studies. In this paper, I will not describe such project. Instead, I will share A typology to approach the intersection of disability and happiness. It is not evidence based. It is not the outcome of a deep process of theorisation. It is an approximation, a foot in the door of the topic. The typology is moulded around 4 modal verbs that express permission (can’t), ability (can), obligation (must), and opposition (shouldn’t). Each type will be illustrated with a representative archetype. We have the sadcrip, the possibilist, the happycrip, and the crip killjoy.  

1. Disabled people can’t be happy: the sadcrip

In relation to happiness, the presence of impairment is regarded and represented as an impediment for first and third parties alike (Bolt, 2015)

Historically, disability has been seen as a tragedy, and disabled people - people who fail to meet up to the ableist zeitgeist- have been stereotyped as sadcrips. Many still assume that disabled people cannot be truly happy and are better off dead (Shakespeare, 2014). As Dahl and Monrad (2025, p. 3) suggested, “the disabled body is constructed as an unhappy object that needs to be transformed into a less disabled body to approach happiness”. The idea that disability is essentially miserable and hinders happiness is used to validate oppression and inequality towards disabled people. Peter Singer, considered by many the most famous philosopher alive, argued that disabled lives have limited happiness potential and therefore can justifiably be replaced by non-disabled ones with supposedly greater capacity for happiness. 

2. Disabled people can be happy: the possibilist

In a society that greets disability with low expectations or outright prejudice, it is entirely possible to be happy and fulfilled and disabled (Ryan, 2025). 

Disabled people are happier than nondisabled people think. Evidence of that causes a cognitive dissoanance in non-disabled people who frame being disabled in pessimism (Albrecht & Devlieger, 1999; McBryde Johnson, 2003). Often, disabled people’s happiness is downplayed: they are happy “because they do not know any better. Perhaps these cheerful people with disabilities are deluding themselves. Or, perhaps they are fooling others (...) these folk must be in some kind of denial” (Shakespeare, 2014, no page). For many people with lived experience of serious and persistent impairment, however, living is not a tragedy, but rather a possibility; an affirmation. One key goal of the affirmation model of disability is to dispel “the erroneous idea that disabled people cannot be happy” (Swain & French, 2000, p. 573). Exercising positive virtues such as optimism is key. Still, possibilists reject the positivity myth and acknowledge that happiness emerges not from the absence of hardship, limitation, and failure, but from the journey through these (Clifton, Llewellyn & Shakespeare, 2019).

3. Disabled people must be happy: The happycrip

It is often a requirement upon oppressed people that we smile and be cheerful. If we comply, we signify our docility and our acquiescence in our situation (Frye, 1983, p. 2).

Since the development of positive psychology and the happiness industry, the possibility of happiness has mutated into a commandment. As Du Toit & Verhoef (2025, p. 412) said, “happiness and our efforts to obtain it became an obsessive new goal and an all-encompassing, nearly new religion”. This means that failing to be happy is failing altogether. The happiness imperative augments the cruelty of the claim that disabled people can’t be happy. However, the happiness discourse has interests in replacing the sadcrip with the happycrip. These two archetypes are “two sides of the same coin” (Cameron, 2024, p. 1891). I define the happycrip as the supercrip after ‘the happiness turn’ (Ahmed, 2019). Happycrips show resilience and overcome their situation. They are “tragic but brave.” (French & Swain, 2008, p. 73). As such, they are the quintessential object of ‘inspiration porn’ (Grue, 2016). This means they are objectified to inspire nondisabled people, to motivate but also shame them, so that they think: If they can be happy, what is my excuse? 

4. Disabled people shouldn’t be happy

There might be joy, but this might take place against a dehumanising backdrop (Goodley, 2021)

If happiness is co-opted, equated with self-sufficiency, and used to justify oppression, it is logical to ponder If disabled people and their allies should rebel against it. The question is: should we become crip killjoys? The crip Killjoy is a “refusing figure” (Sheppard, 2025, p. 7) that embraces “attempts to think and act that… dispense with, the propensity to affirm” (Dekeyser & Jellis, 2021, p. 318). This does not mean crip killjoys are against happiness itself. Rather, they reject the neoliberal-ableist fantasy of happiness, turn down imposed happiness scripts, and refuse to perform happiness for others. Although this is not an easy position to occupy, it is not necessarily bitter. As Bolt (2015, p. 1105) suggested, “those of us who identify as disabled may find happiness by transcending the very norms to which we are meant to aspire”. 

Conclusion

The aim of introducing the modest typology above was to raise awareness about a complex phenomenon asking for further attention. Thus far, happiness has been an absent presence in critical disability studies. To borrow from Shuster and Westbrook (2022), there is a ‘happiness deficit’ in the field. Meanwhile, those who have set the agenda for a critical examination of the ‘happiness turn’ and its consequences have utterly ignored disability, both as an axis of oppression and a critical thinking category. There is a ‘disability deficit’ in critical happiness studies. I firmly believe that rethinking happiness is a key step towards disability justice, and that disability opens up possibilities for rethinking happiness. It is the time for DisHappiness Studies. Watch this space!

References

Ahmed, S. (2019). La promesa de la felicidad. Barcelona: Caja Negra. 

Albrecht, G. L., & Devlieger, P. J. (1999). The disability paradox: high quality of life against all odds. Social science & medicine, 48(8), 977-988.

Bolt, D. (2015). Not forgetting happiness: The tripartite model of disability and its application in literary criticism. Disability & Society, 30(7), 1103-1117.

Cameron, C. (2024). Some things never seem to change: further towards an affirmation model. Disability & society, 39(7), 1890-1895.

Clifton, S., Llewellyn, G., & Shakespeare, T. (2018). Quadriplegia, virtue theory, and flourishing: A qualitative study drawing on self-narratives. Disability & Society, 33(1), 20-38.

Dahl, O., & Monrad, M. (2025). The tragedy of promising happiness through overcoming disability. Social Science & Medicine, 367, 117769.

Dekeyser, T., & Jellis, T. (2021). Besides affirmationism? On geography and negativity. Area, 53(2), 318-325.

du Toit, J., & Verhoef, A. (2025). Happiness, circumstance, and the environment: Philosophy’s crucial voice in times of environmental crisis. South African Journal of Philosophy, 44(2), 210-222.

Frye, M. (1983). The systemic birdcage of sexism. The Politics of Reality: essays in feminist theory, 2-7.

Goodley, D. (2021). Disability and other human questions. Bingley: Emerald. 

Grue, J. (2016). The problem with inspiration porn: A tentative definition and a provisional critique. Disability & society, 31(6), 838-849.

McBryde Johnson, H. (2003). Unspeakable conversations.  https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html

Ryan, F. (2025). Who wants normal? London: Penguin. 

Shakespeare, T. (2014). A Point of View: Happiness and disability. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27554754

Shuster, S. M., & Westbrook, L. (2024). Reducing the joy deficit in sociology: A study of transgender joy. Social Problems, 71(3), 791-809.

Swain, J., & French, S. (2000). Towards an affirmation model of disability. Disability & society, 15(4), 569-582.