The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives—to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives. Judith Halberstam proposes “low theory” as a mode of thinking and writing that operates at many different levels at once. Low theory is derived from eccentric archives. It runs the risk of not being taken seriously. It entails a willingness to fail and to lose one’s way, to pursue difficult questions about complicity, and to find counterintuitive forms of resistance. Tacking back and forth between high theory and low theory, high culture and low culture, Halberstam looks for the unexpected and subversive in popular culture, avant-garde performance, and queer art. She pays particular attention to animated children’s films, revealing narratives filled with unexpected encounters between the childish, the transformative, and the queer. Failure sometimes offers more creative, cooperative, and surprising ways of being in the world, even as it forces us to face the dark side of life, love, and libido. Reviews: A lively and thought-provoking examination of how the homogenizing tendencies of modern society might be resisted through the creative application of failure, forgetting, and passivity, actions generally deemed of little value within today's capitalist models of success. . . . [A]s a close reader of popular culture, she is exemplary, and as a valiant attempt to find value in positions and attitudes such as negativity that our modern success-oriented society disdains, this study is never less than thrilling.” —Publishers Weekly “Queer Theory using Spongebob Squarepants? Totally there... Underdogs and shoddy queers can take wordy, erudite solace in Halberstam’s words.”—Gay Times “[H]ere is a book well worth the time and attention it takes to read it and to consider its implications. Most especially in that Judith Halberstam writes not only with authority, but also with genuine wit, which leaves the reader laughing out loud from time to time, something quite unknown until now in books of queer theory. Further, Ms. Halberstam presents her case with deep insight into human nature, and into our deepset cultural need to simplify our definition of the word success—and, up until now, our seeming need to ignore the creative implications of failure.”—Vinton Rafe McCabe, New York Journal of Books “Judith Halberstam . . . is insightful and intellectually brave in places, and makes a significant intervention in the development of queer theory. The Queer Art of Failure is also utterly charming.”—Robert Eaglestone, Times Higher Education Supplement “Before the Stonewall Riots, ‘queers’ lurked in the cultural shadows, and Halberstam finds that environment to be fruitful and even revolutionary. This book is guaranteed to be controversial. It would make a good basis for discussion after seeing one of the movies, performances, or bodies of visual pieces that analyzed in its pages.”—Jean Roberta, Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide “Halberstam is most convincing is in contrasting liberal narratives of queer progress, in which freedoms gradually unfold, with wider radical histories in which struggles often end in defeat, from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the insurrection of May 1968 and beyond, and from which lessons have to be drawn. What becomes clear is that the victory of equality in a conservative world may be pyrrhic, and that making failure into a style (as it was for Quentin Crisp) or even a way of life (as for Foucault) may bring far more positive results than the unquestioning pursuit of ‘success.’”—Juliet Jacques, New Statesman “Halberstam’s book is at its best when she reads the utopian possibilities in failure as key narrative threads, particularly in contemporary animated movies that she calls “Pixarvolt”, films like Fantastic Mr. Fox or Bee Movie. . . . Perhaps the best reading in the book, certainly the funniest, is her densely textured interpretation of Dude, Where’s My Car?. Halberstam is having fun here, and she invites her readers to laugh with her at taking the stoner comedy seriously. . . . [T]here is the tremendous intellectual energy animating this book.”—David Banash, PopMatters (Selected as a Best Nonfiction Book of 2011) “Declaring her intent to celebrate failure in its many forms, Halberstam invigorates this potentially droopy topic with a flair that feels almost inspirational.”—Monica Nolan, Bitch “The Queer Art of Failure is an energetic and loving tribute to those of us who fail, lose, get lost, forget, get angry, become unruly, disrupt the normative order of things, and exist and behave in the world in ways that are considered antinormative, anticapitalist, and antidisciplinary. . . . [T]his book is a must-read, particularly for scholars who work at the intersection of Media Studies and Queer Theory.”—Liora Elias, International Journal of Communication “Flitting deftly between the complex theoretical paradigms of queer, Marxist, and radical feminist thought and a number of eccentric, sometimes bleak artifacts of popular culture, Halberstam dives headlong into explorations of ‘animation, art, stupidity, and forgetfulness,’ as well as ‘the meaning of loss, masochism, and passivity’ to realize a radical vision for alternative futures. . . . The Queer Art of Failure has the potential to transform the way we think about our work in the world, encouraging us to re/create alternative futures.”—Allison D. Carr, Enculturation “Because Halberstam uses pop-culture examples, The Queer Art of Failure is an ideal text for introducing queer theory to beginners. The politics of heteronormativity and sexual dissidence has never appeared as lucid as it does now that we have SpongeBob SquarePants as our guide.”—Chase Dimock, Lambda Literary Review Contents: Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xii Introduction: Low Theory 1 1. Animating Revolt and Revolting Animation 27 2. Dude, Where's My Phallus? Forgetting, Losing, Looping 53 3. The Queer Art of Failure 87 4. Shadow Feminisms: Queer Negativity and Radical Passivity 123 5. "The Killer in Me Is the Killer in You": Homosexuality and Fascism 147 6. Animating Failure: Ending, Fleeing, Surviving 173 Notes 189 Bibliography 193 Index 201 About The Author: Judith Halberstam is Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Halberstam is the author of In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, as well as Female Masculinity and Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, both also published by Duke University Press.
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