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so you want to know more about queer failure, and much of the major work on the subject is from jack halberstam, whose work is pretty good but he's kind of a curmudgeon lately at the best of times & saying some wild stuff (including contributing to a controversial issue of trans studies quarterly that leveled criticisms at the work of a young (read: then graduate student) trans woman of color) at such a pace that i truly don't even know what to do with that anymore. (nb: here's a link to someone on the other site going through these pieces, i really haven't taken the time to unpack them)
but i'll admit it: i think the original work is good. it's readable. it's fun. it's a quick read. there's something about it that really resonated with me when i read it in 2017/2018, and it's this: queerness is a willingness to fail at the things that a (hetero)normative society deems successful. it's all about taking circuitous routes to what helps you flourish, seeking out pleasure, and enjoying the "low" arts. so much about queerness is deemed risky: our bodies, our sex, our desires, our politics, so why can't we just be nice and good and if we'd just behave then people would like us more. i like the queer concept of failure for the way it throws its hands up and says: i will never be successful if that's what you want it to mean. in this way, queer failure operates as a kind of an antiassimilationist mode.
queer failure posits that we can screw up, be messy, go gremlin mode and still be happy and smart and fuckable at the end of the day. so what if we hit puberty at a different time from everyone else? so what if we'll never own a home because our careers are untenable in a capitalist ecosystem? so what if our families don't look right? so what if we want to watch cartoons and play video games all day? and what if we took all of that seriously?
now, don't get me wrong. i love a little goblin mode, to revel in the indulgence of spectacular failure. at the same time, i think where queer failure gets off the rails is in this exact mode that my committee member is describing -- what if i want to seek that fierce desire and joy in getting it right (whatever that means)? i often (so sorry so sorry, i know) think about hannah gadsby's netflix special nanette in a similar vein, where their thesis suggests that if we're too-focused on our failures and punchlines (thereby centering the comfort & ease of others at the expense of our healing) we might just live there forever. if we're always reveling in our failure, are we also allowing ourselves to win? where do we tell ourselves that we did it right? if we're always operating in a mode that primarily operates from a rejection of a cissexist heteronormative patriarchal society, are we centering it? are we consciously creating an alternative that stands on its own? what if you held a protest and everyone came?
anyway not to get all #hopepunk on you, but i think this is about finding the viable alternatives, building the models, seeing it through & following up. as i descend into a parody of myself, i also return to kropotkin's conquest of bread -- a treatise on how a revolution will fail if you don't make sure people are fed. in other words, mutual aid. when i feel like failure is the only option, it helps to think about bread. when the revolution comes, i hope to hand out bread. in the meantime, i'll make some for others (and hope to get it right).
