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The Queer Art of Failure
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.
This is a John Hope Franklin Center book
This is a John Hope Franklin Center book
211 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2011
663 people are currently reading
13149 people want to read
About the author
J. Jack Halberstam
31 books566 followersJack Halberstam (born December 15, 1961), also known as Judith Halberstam, is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature, as well as serving as the Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California (USC). Halberstam was the Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC. He is a gender and queer theorist and author.
Halberstam, who accepts masculine and feminine pronouns, as well as the name "Judith," with regard to his gender identity, focuses on the topic of tomboys and female masculinity for his writings. His 1998 Female Masculinity book discusses a common by-product of gender binarism, termed "the bathroom problem" with outlining the dangerous and awkward dilemma of a perceived gender deviant's justification of presence in a gender-policed zone, such as a public bathroom, and the identity implications of "passing" therein.
Jack is a popular speaker and gives lectures in the United States and internationally on queer failure, sex and media, subcultures, visual culture, gender variance, popular film and animation. Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book on fascism and (homo)sexuality.
Halberstam, who accepts masculine and feminine pronouns, as well as the name "Judith," with regard to his gender identity, focuses on the topic of tomboys and female masculinity for his writings. His 1998 Female Masculinity book discusses a common by-product of gender binarism, termed "the bathroom problem" with outlining the dangerous and awkward dilemma of a perceived gender deviant's justification of presence in a gender-policed zone, such as a public bathroom, and the identity implications of "passing" therein.
Jack is a popular speaker and gives lectures in the United States and internationally on queer failure, sex and media, subcultures, visual culture, gender variance, popular film and animation. Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book on fascism and (homo)sexuality.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 343 reviews
March 11, 2018
Browsing in a library is one of the great joys of life, as it allows serendipitous book discoveries like this: a rehabilitation of failure through academic analysis of pop culture artefacts. Once I started reading ‘The Queer Art of Failure’, I realised it was calculated to appeal to:
1. Those who feel like failures most of the time, in part because because they find most popular markers of success tedious and unappealing, and in part due to general negativity;
2. Those who feel like failures in academia because the corporate imperatives to perpetually publish, to sell education to students, and to market yourself are repellent and exhaustingly difficult;
3. Those who, despite deep ambivalence about academia, genuinely enjoy reading theory and do so as a leisure activity;
4. Those who alternate reading depressing non-fiction with watching trashy American films;
5. Those who are tired of heteronormativity.
I am all five of these people, so this book delighted me. Halberstam wanders across high and low culture, through various areas of theory, tacitly endorsing scholarship that isn’t particularly useful or constructive. Although I didn’t agree with, or even understand, every idea in the book, I greatly appreciated its defence of laziness, fallibility, and the analysis of animated kids films. I took particular pleasure in the brazen re-purposing of academic theory as a rationale for being a lazy and reluctant academic. From the introduction:
This has an intuitive appeal for me. Subsequent chapters examine an intriguing range of topics relating to queerness and failure. One considers animation, another masochism, another forgetfulness, yet another the homoerotic element of fascism. Halberstam draws upon a diverse range of theorists to interpret art installations, films, and photographs. In keeping with the subject matter, the book avoids sweeping unequivocal statements. Instead, arguments are nuanced without becoming too obtuse, for example:
At times I wasn’t sure whether I was enjoying the book sincerely or parodically, but it didn’t matter. Either way, this is a sublime sentence:
Another highlight is Halberstam’s vehement disagreement with Slavoj Žižek’s interpretation of Kung Fu Panda. My favourite part, however, was the analysis of the awful film Dude, Where’s My Car? which I have of course seen. Halberstam cheerfully acknowledges the possibility of creating non-existent depths in a stupid American comedy, then proceeds to discuss said comedy for more than ten pages. While the whole thing merits quotation, I’ll confine myself to this:
This reminded me of the time I was trapped in a boring seminar while caffeinated and wrote five pages on the ways in which the Fast and Furious franchise is an ongoing allegory for the War on Terror. Despite its depressingly corporate nature, academia is perhaps the only reasonable milieu to channel the perpetual over-analysis my brain would conduct anyway. I wouldn’t necessarily have given this book five stars had I read it at another time in my life. By sheer luck, I found it when especially receptive to a subversive and entertaining angle on academia and failure. If that’s your niche too, I definitely recommend ‘The Queer Art of Failure’.
1. Those who feel like failures most of the time, in part because because they find most popular markers of success tedious and unappealing, and in part due to general negativity;
2. Those who feel like failures in academia because the corporate imperatives to perpetually publish, to sell education to students, and to market yourself are repellent and exhaustingly difficult;
3. Those who, despite deep ambivalence about academia, genuinely enjoy reading theory and do so as a leisure activity;
4. Those who alternate reading depressing non-fiction with watching trashy American films;
5. Those who are tired of heteronormativity.
I am all five of these people, so this book delighted me. Halberstam wanders across high and low culture, through various areas of theory, tacitly endorsing scholarship that isn’t particularly useful or constructive. Although I didn’t agree with, or even understand, every idea in the book, I greatly appreciated its defence of laziness, fallibility, and the analysis of animated kids films. I took particular pleasure in the brazen re-purposing of academic theory as a rationale for being a lazy and reluctant academic. From the introduction:
For Moten and Hanley, the critical academic is not the answer to encroaching professionalisation but an extension of it, using the very same tools and legitimating strategies to become ‘an ally of professional education’. Moten and Hanley prefer to pitch their tent with the ‘subversive intellectuals’, a maroon community of outcast thinkers who refuse, resist, and renege on the demands of ‘rigour’, ‘excellence’, and ‘productivity’. They tell us to ‘steal from the university’, ‘to steal the enlightenment for others’ [...]
This book joins forces with their ‘subversive intellectual’ and agrees to steal from the university, to, as they say, ‘abuse its hospitality’ and to be ‘in it but not of it’. Moten and Harney’s these exhort the subversive intellectual to, among other things, worry about the university, refuse professionalisation, forge a collectivity, and retreat to the external world beyond the ivied walls of the campus. I would add to their these the following. First, Resist mastery.
This has an intuitive appeal for me. Subsequent chapters examine an intriguing range of topics relating to queerness and failure. One considers animation, another masochism, another forgetfulness, yet another the homoerotic element of fascism. Halberstam draws upon a diverse range of theorists to interpret art installations, films, and photographs. In keeping with the subject matter, the book avoids sweeping unequivocal statements. Instead, arguments are nuanced without becoming too obtuse, for example:
In order to capture the complexity of these shifting relations we cannot afford to settle on linear connections between radical desires and radical politics; instead we have to be prepared to be unsettled by the politically problematic connections history throws our way.
At times I wasn’t sure whether I was enjoying the book sincerely or parodically, but it didn’t matter. Either way, this is a sublime sentence:
Chicken Run is different from Toy Story in that the Oedipal falls away as a point of reference in favour of a Gramscian structure of counterhegemony engineered by organic (chicken) intellectuals.
Another highlight is Halberstam’s vehement disagreement with Slavoj Žižek’s interpretation of Kung Fu Panda. My favourite part, however, was the analysis of the awful film Dude, Where’s My Car? which I have of course seen. Halberstam cheerfully acknowledges the possibility of creating non-existent depths in a stupid American comedy, then proceeds to discuss said comedy for more than ten pages. While the whole thing merits quotation, I’ll confine myself to this:
My quick summary of Dude does not immediately suggest that the film offers much in the way of redemptive narratives for a lost generation. And yet if we must live with the logic of white male stupidity, and it seems we must, then understanding its form, its seductions, and its power are mandatory. Dude offers a surprisingly complete allegorical map of what Raymond Williams calls ‘a lived hegemony’.
This reminded me of the time I was trapped in a boring seminar while caffeinated and wrote five pages on the ways in which the Fast and Furious franchise is an ongoing allegory for the War on Terror. Despite its depressingly corporate nature, academia is perhaps the only reasonable milieu to channel the perpetual over-analysis my brain would conduct anyway. I wouldn’t necessarily have given this book five stars had I read it at another time in my life. By sheer luck, I found it when especially receptive to a subversive and entertaining angle on academia and failure. If that’s your niche too, I definitely recommend ‘The Queer Art of Failure’.
June 27, 2021
On page 174, near the end of this book, Halberstam laments Slavoj Zizek's shortcomings as a critic, his treatment of one piece of media in particular, and notes how he consistently "pillories postmodernism, queers, and feminism... insisting we are all dupes of culture." Yes, I wrote in the margins, so disappointing when an otherwise interesting theorist has massive blind spots in their ideology.
On a not-unconnected note, I also drew this face -- :/ -- in the margins of The Queer Art of Failure a lot.
I should like this book. I should be eager to attack anything and everything else Halberstam has to offer. I like -- I like very much -- the ideas he proposes he will argue (Halberstam is AFAB and "loosey-goosey" with gender but as far as I can tell he/him are the more preferred pronouns) and the theories he promises to engage with. In practice, however... Failure feels a lot less like a follow-through on those intriguing ideas, more Halberstam arranging theory in self-referential tangles and expounding on how he sees these theories in his favorite works of art, both high and low.
If all you have is a hammer, as the saying goes, everything begins to look like a nail. Halberstam upholds Freud (try making an drinking game to every relationship framed in "Oedipal" terms) and Foucault, which is fine, diversity in theory is fine, and after all someone has to like the black jellybeans, etc. The problem emerges when, if aspects of the text Halberstam is analyzing don't fulfill the expectations of Freudian or Foucauldian theory, Halberstam then takes extreme leaps in logic in order to explain their existence, and in doing so assumes extremes of either education (that the general Adam Sandler-viewing public would be familiar with the details of Hawaii's history of colonization) or ignorance (that people would be shocked, shocked, to find Actual Gay People could be complicit in fascism or military propaganda). The amount of times I noted "any Classical scholar would know this" or "why are we forgetting intersectional feminism" or realizing I was expected to be bowled over by linking sex with the desire of self-eradication (my kingdom for a Jungian) was... exhausting.
And a little bit infuriating. It's one thing for a self-identified member of a minority group to "reclaim" otherwise exploitative texts and performances -- I'm actually a huge fan of that, on a personal level. And yet! When you are not a member of that group, somehow framing a work that is textually racist, textually transmisogynistic, as radical and revolutionary once your preferred theories are applied is... the taste level is lacking*. Ignoring real-world impact in favor of showing how one's pet theories "transform" these works is a sign of astounding privilege. At worst, there are sections where Halberstam's favorite theories and the agendas of white nationalists lead to the same outcome (forgetting colonialist pasts, cultural or even literal eradication of a community -- I in no way assume Halberstam actually endorses these things, but it's a hard parallel to ignore). At best, it feels like chmess.
This isn't helped by Halberstam tweaking the details of certain texts -- Nemo actually doesn't come into his own until he's inspired by rejoining his father -- or stating things without citing the reasoning behind it, such as his belief that the "matriarchal" relationships in womens' studies academia are "dangerous." Sounds fascinating! But: why? No, we're never told why, we just get Halberstam's avowal that connections between mothers and daughters lead to the perpetuation of colonialist thought, patriarchal oppression, and limited identity. Again, I'm game, this sounds interesting, but can I see the math?
Unfortunately when Halberstam shows his math, it's... Okay. The idea that current queer identity politics relies too much on victimhood -- I'll buy that, I'm on board. But the chapter about possible homosexuals in the Third Reich is very loopy in its logic. Saying fascism enfolds homosexuality because certain soldiers or generals were "accepted" is like saying Eisenhower loved lesbians just because Johnnie Phelps persuaded him he'd lose most of the WAC if he went on a witch hunt. If Halberstam addressed any supporting theory beyond the cult of the uber-masculine, I'd be a willing audience, but he readily admits any feminine performance was scorned and Jewishness was seen as innately feminine. (The actual experiences of queer women are not addressed at all. Bisexuality, in this and all chapters, never comes up.)
Halberstam then tries to use this argument to prove the hypocrisy of more modern gay rights movements in using the pink triangle. (And there's a certain subtext I might be projecting, but Halberstam may believe many of the "middle-class" gay men who claim it are too bougie to have been the victims of fascism at any time.) He outright contradicts Milk's claims that homosexuals were gassed; they were only beaten and abused and left to die in camps. Okay? I'm younger than Halberstam, but in my own experience the pink triangle was much more associated with AIDS protests -- the rainbow flag being the true rallying symbol for the community at large. The implication was that the neglect of the American government in addressing the crisis made them complicit in the resulting deaths, not that they were being directly murdered as those murdered in the Nazi gas chambers. The pink triangle was deliberately provocative, a performance, intended to recontextualize both the crisis and the responsibility of the U.S. government towards its citizens. It did not mean "anyone who is gay can't be anything but a victim."
There is a consistent thread of Halberstam conflating performance of a thing with endorsement of that thing in fact, which is really my issue with Freudian theory. Ignorance of semiotic interplay, or worse, deliberate misconstruction of intent in order to prop up esoteric theories has limited charm. (Although Halberstam's authorial voice has quite a lot of charm. This book is very readable and engaging. I'm just not won over with charm alone.) It leads to sections where Dude, Where's My Car is apparently liberated queer ideology and the messages of very particular children's movies speak to the queerness of their intended audience, not the people (or the politics of the people) who made them.
Very readable. Fascinating ideas. Dicey arguments to support them. Much like a house of cards under glass -- captivating in ambition, utterly unable to tolerate exposure to any but the most accommodating of elements. Lift the barrier, bring it fully into the "real" world... and poof, it falls flat.
*Halberstam also uses "tr*nny" to describe characters in a movie, just a general warning.
On a not-unconnected note, I also drew this face -- :/ -- in the margins of The Queer Art of Failure a lot.
I should like this book. I should be eager to attack anything and everything else Halberstam has to offer. I like -- I like very much -- the ideas he proposes he will argue (Halberstam is AFAB and "loosey-goosey" with gender but as far as I can tell he/him are the more preferred pronouns) and the theories he promises to engage with. In practice, however... Failure feels a lot less like a follow-through on those intriguing ideas, more Halberstam arranging theory in self-referential tangles and expounding on how he sees these theories in his favorite works of art, both high and low.
If all you have is a hammer, as the saying goes, everything begins to look like a nail. Halberstam upholds Freud (try making an drinking game to every relationship framed in "Oedipal" terms) and Foucault, which is fine, diversity in theory is fine, and after all someone has to like the black jellybeans, etc. The problem emerges when, if aspects of the text Halberstam is analyzing don't fulfill the expectations of Freudian or Foucauldian theory, Halberstam then takes extreme leaps in logic in order to explain their existence, and in doing so assumes extremes of either education (that the general Adam Sandler-viewing public would be familiar with the details of Hawaii's history of colonization) or ignorance (that people would be shocked, shocked, to find Actual Gay People could be complicit in fascism or military propaganda). The amount of times I noted "any Classical scholar would know this" or "why are we forgetting intersectional feminism" or realizing I was expected to be bowled over by linking sex with the desire of self-eradication (my kingdom for a Jungian) was... exhausting.
And a little bit infuriating. It's one thing for a self-identified member of a minority group to "reclaim" otherwise exploitative texts and performances -- I'm actually a huge fan of that, on a personal level. And yet! When you are not a member of that group, somehow framing a work that is textually racist, textually transmisogynistic, as radical and revolutionary once your preferred theories are applied is... the taste level is lacking*. Ignoring real-world impact in favor of showing how one's pet theories "transform" these works is a sign of astounding privilege. At worst, there are sections where Halberstam's favorite theories and the agendas of white nationalists lead to the same outcome (forgetting colonialist pasts, cultural or even literal eradication of a community -- I in no way assume Halberstam actually endorses these things, but it's a hard parallel to ignore). At best, it feels like chmess.
This isn't helped by Halberstam tweaking the details of certain texts -- Nemo actually doesn't come into his own until he's inspired by rejoining his father -- or stating things without citing the reasoning behind it, such as his belief that the "matriarchal" relationships in womens' studies academia are "dangerous." Sounds fascinating! But: why? No, we're never told why, we just get Halberstam's avowal that connections between mothers and daughters lead to the perpetuation of colonialist thought, patriarchal oppression, and limited identity. Again, I'm game, this sounds interesting, but can I see the math?
Unfortunately when Halberstam shows his math, it's... Okay. The idea that current queer identity politics relies too much on victimhood -- I'll buy that, I'm on board. But the chapter about possible homosexuals in the Third Reich is very loopy in its logic. Saying fascism enfolds homosexuality because certain soldiers or generals were "accepted" is like saying Eisenhower loved lesbians just because Johnnie Phelps persuaded him he'd lose most of the WAC if he went on a witch hunt. If Halberstam addressed any supporting theory beyond the cult of the uber-masculine, I'd be a willing audience, but he readily admits any feminine performance was scorned and Jewishness was seen as innately feminine. (The actual experiences of queer women are not addressed at all. Bisexuality, in this and all chapters, never comes up.)
Halberstam then tries to use this argument to prove the hypocrisy of more modern gay rights movements in using the pink triangle. (And there's a certain subtext I might be projecting, but Halberstam may believe many of the "middle-class" gay men who claim it are too bougie to have been the victims of fascism at any time.) He outright contradicts Milk's claims that homosexuals were gassed; they were only beaten and abused and left to die in camps. Okay? I'm younger than Halberstam, but in my own experience the pink triangle was much more associated with AIDS protests -- the rainbow flag being the true rallying symbol for the community at large. The implication was that the neglect of the American government in addressing the crisis made them complicit in the resulting deaths, not that they were being directly murdered as those murdered in the Nazi gas chambers. The pink triangle was deliberately provocative, a performance, intended to recontextualize both the crisis and the responsibility of the U.S. government towards its citizens. It did not mean "anyone who is gay can't be anything but a victim."
There is a consistent thread of Halberstam conflating performance of a thing with endorsement of that thing in fact, which is really my issue with Freudian theory. Ignorance of semiotic interplay, or worse, deliberate misconstruction of intent in order to prop up esoteric theories has limited charm. (Although Halberstam's authorial voice has quite a lot of charm. This book is very readable and engaging. I'm just not won over with charm alone.) It leads to sections where Dude, Where's My Car is apparently liberated queer ideology and the messages of very particular children's movies speak to the queerness of their intended audience, not the people (or the politics of the people) who made them.
Very readable. Fascinating ideas. Dicey arguments to support them. Much like a house of cards under glass -- captivating in ambition, utterly unable to tolerate exposure to any but the most accommodating of elements. Lift the barrier, bring it fully into the "real" world... and poof, it falls flat.
*Halberstam also uses "tr*nny" to describe characters in a movie, just a general warning.
June 13, 2020
I read most of this book and then got a little bored. I feel after reading this, and Halberstam's "Skin Shows," that their approach to theory is a bit vague and imprecise. Skin Shows suffered from a lot of poetic slippage that muddied its arguments; this book didn't fulfill the promise of its central thesis, of failure as a possible queer tactic against heteronormative/capitalist hegemony. Instead, it offered a bunch of essays about other queer stuff. Which were sortof interesting, but again, didn't drive home the main point. Essentially, I think this book is not "about" what it is trying to be about. Secondly - I'm writing this a while after finishing it - I recall it being pretty vague about what really constitutes "failure" proper. I've found that this vagueness has lent itself to lazy application of failure as a tactic in recent artwork I've seen.
I'm about to take a workshop that will re-engage this book, so maybe that will change my thoughts on it.
I'm about to take a workshop that will re-engage this book, so maybe that will change my thoughts on it.
July 9, 2018
This is the most fun you’ll have reading an a academic text. at dinner tonight I was explaining the theory about Dora from Finding Nemo occupying a queer space of freedom and reinventing herself moment by moment in a way that defies hegemony. Everyone was laughing and saying, so true!
April 17, 2020
I loved some of the insight in this book, the chapter on forgetfulness is probably my favourite. I think after reading this, I will watch animated films in a different way.
January 26, 2013
Halberstam is unique to queer theory in that she is able to channel both effective queer negativity and present practical, recognizable motivating forces for it without sounding like Lee Edelman Lite. While I love Lee Edelman in that I believe his argument is sexy and his logic is almost flawless, I think Halberstam presents something I can truly believe in. "The Queer Art of Failure" thoughtfully and responsibly explores the question: "How do we engage in and teach antidisciplinary knowledge?" (11). This knowledge, she proves early on, is the answer to power that inhibits queer meaning with an alibi of knowledge or learning, but in effect only manages to arbitrarily reproduce itself.
The goal of the book is very accessible: prevent the inhibition of queer meaning by cultivating productive dissent. The essays achieve this goal by enacting a three-part thesis: resist all knowledge attained through mastery; privilege low culture, theory, and even stupidity or naivety; and finally, refuse to remember the means by which queer meaning has been attained in order to prevent new disciplinary structures from arising (10-15).
In accordance with her goal to privilege "knowledge from below," the content is surprisingly accessible, while providing an exciting new stance on the important question of queer negativity. I think she intimates her book's contribution to this question since she is conscious of and challenges the looming shadow of utopianism running throughout. I can't recommend it more!
The goal of the book is very accessible: prevent the inhibition of queer meaning by cultivating productive dissent. The essays achieve this goal by enacting a three-part thesis: resist all knowledge attained through mastery; privilege low culture, theory, and even stupidity or naivety; and finally, refuse to remember the means by which queer meaning has been attained in order to prevent new disciplinary structures from arising (10-15).
In accordance with her goal to privilege "knowledge from below," the content is surprisingly accessible, while providing an exciting new stance on the important question of queer negativity. I think she intimates her book's contribution to this question since she is conscious of and challenges the looming shadow of utopianism running throughout. I can't recommend it more!
May 28, 2024
Save me Jack Halberstam
Jack Halberstam, save me
save me
Jack Halberstam
Jack Halberstam, save me
save me
Jack Halberstam
June 19, 2018
I'm reading this for my M.A. thesis and I have to say: I hardly found an academic book this entertaining! Gotta love Halberstam!
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August 21, 2024
Well, this was the right time in my life to read this fun non-fiction / essay collection / art critique that analyzes stuff from Chicken Run (which I need to watch after this), Dude Where's My Car to much more 'serious' art.
*the author is trans and this book came out in 2011 and as such trans people are referred to as 'transsexuals', be prepared for that.
The concept here is that to be successful under capitalism and neoliberalism is a fucking shit idea (which it is) and failure can lead to other avenues, explorations, playfulness and approaching things with curiosity, when we let go of the ego, ambition and competition that are programmed into us because of the systems we live in.
I also liked that it folded in quite a bit of anarchist thought here. And how the whole book allows the idea of utter messiness to exist and breathe (it's such a relief!).
And yeah, I dig it! The book encourages us to fail in becoming a master (because mastering something can lead to rigidity and the inability to further learn and teach others with a different learning style), fail in creating a family (especially a nuclear neoliberal family that has all the trappings of heteronormativity, even if The Couple is queer), it teaches us to fail in remembering (remembering the NORMS) and many other things.
Some other bits and pieces I liked (of many):
+even the idea of representation in fiction can be a bit shit because it inherently creates heroes and uneven power dynamics.
+patriarchal power takes at least two: one to be a man and the other one to reflect his being a man.
+the Other is always buried in the dominant.
+Coraline actually has a very conservative bend.
[insta-review]
Contained a lot of cool ideas and interpretations. Wish I could have read this at like 13 (I would not have understood it, but at least the introduction).
*the author is trans and this book came out in 2011 and as such trans people are referred to as 'transsexuals', be prepared for that.
The concept here is that to be successful under capitalism and neoliberalism is a fucking shit idea (which it is) and failure can lead to other avenues, explorations, playfulness and approaching things with curiosity, when we let go of the ego, ambition and competition that are programmed into us because of the systems we live in.
I also liked that it folded in quite a bit of anarchist thought here. And how the whole book allows the idea of utter messiness to exist and breathe (it's such a relief!).
And yeah, I dig it! The book encourages us to fail in becoming a master (because mastering something can lead to rigidity and the inability to further learn and teach others with a different learning style), fail in creating a family (especially a nuclear neoliberal family that has all the trappings of heteronormativity, even if The Couple is queer), it teaches us to fail in remembering (remembering the NORMS) and many other things.
Some other bits and pieces I liked (of many):
+even the idea of representation in fiction can be a bit shit because it inherently creates heroes and uneven power dynamics.
+patriarchal power takes at least two: one to be a man and the other one to reflect his being a man.
+the Other is always buried in the dominant.
+Coraline actually has a very conservative bend.
[insta-review]
Contained a lot of cool ideas and interpretations. Wish I could have read this at like 13 (I would not have understood it, but at least the introduction).
February 8, 2017
To live is to fail, to bungle, to disappoint, and ultimately to die; rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment, the queer art of failure involves the acceptance of the finite, the embrace of the absurd, the silly, and the hopelessly goofy. Rather than resisting endings and limits, let us instead revel in and cleave to all of our own inevitable fantastic failures.
It's easy to say of course, but the very title of this book invites us to think about the ways in which this book fails. Because it does, at times - the readings are not always convincing, or too short, or too meandering; the logic is not always conclusive. (Then again, does it have to be? The idea itself, sometimes, is much more interesting than the neat way by which we may arrive at it.) And yet there is a lot of beauty in between, a lot of productive ideas, a lot of things to work with, too. A book to return to, not just from an academic perspective.
August 23, 2011
For those who are skeptical of a "gay rights movement" which aspires only to enable "queers" to assimilate into the cultural mainstream, this book will seem as refreshing as water in a desert. As Judith Halberstam explains in her introduction:
"Radical utopians continue to search for different ways of being in the world and being in relation to one another than those already prescribed for the liberal and consumer subject."
She goes on to critique a widely-accepted conception of "success:"
"I argue that success in a heteronormative, capitalist society equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation. But these measures of success have come under serious pressure recently, with the collapse of financial markets on the one hand and the epic rise in divorce rates on the other."
Halberstam thus implies that the assimilationists among us are trying to escape from homophobic oppression by jumping onto a sinking ship. She states her purpose:
"The Queer Art of Failure dismantles the logics of success and failure with which we currently live. Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world. Failing is something queers do and have always done exceptionally well; for queers failure can be a style, to cite Quentin Crisp, or a way of life, to cite Foucault, and it can stand in contrast to the grim scenarios of success that depend upon 'trying and trying again.'"
The author, who has written and taught widely on gender formation in a cultural context, aims to analyze "queer" subtexts in a variety of media, from animated movies to performance art to art photography. She shows "queerness" (sexual and emotional proclivities that don't lead to reproductive heterosexual monogamy) as linked to "failure" by the standards of heteronormative, capitalist society. She also shows this "failure" as something which might logically be chosen as preferable to conformist adult life. Along the way, the author critiques the standardized "knowledge" which leads to conformity. If "knowledge" (as disseminated in universities) serves the cultural status quo, the forgetting or losing of knowledge might actually lead to new ways of thinking. To support this point, the amnesia (repeated forgetting and relearning) of central characters in the comedies Dude, Where's My Car? Finding Nemo and Fifty First Dates is discussed as a plot device that leads to new developments.
In her discussion of computer generated imagery in movies aimed at children, the author coins the term "pixarvolt" to define "an animated world rich in political allegory, stuffed to the gills with queerness and rife with analogies between humans and animals."
The author's suggestion that her interdisciplanary approach to "queer failure" should or will be embraced outside the Ivory Tower seems to this reviewer to be the weakest plank in her argument. Like other academics who point out the limitations of the academy, she seems to be trying to move the earth while standing on it.
Halberstam's case for "queer failure" looks counterintuitive, but it is an exhilarating challenge to conventional assumptions, including those made by some "Queer Studies" scholars. In a section on "queerness" and fascism, she critiques the modern assumption of an unbroken history of prominent "queers" as advocates of a liberal agenda of individual (especially sexual) freedom for all. She disentangles homophobia from macho contempt for femininity (associated in Nazi ideology with heterosexual women, Jewish men and homosexual men) in order to show how some "queer," masculine men and women could admire and support totalitarian regimes.
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 watching one of the movies or performances analyzed in its pages.
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"Radical utopians continue to search for different ways of being in the world and being in relation to one another than those already prescribed for the liberal and consumer subject."
She goes on to critique a widely-accepted conception of "success:"
"I argue that success in a heteronormative, capitalist society equates too easily to specific forms of reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation. But these measures of success have come under serious pressure recently, with the collapse of financial markets on the one hand and the epic rise in divorce rates on the other."
Halberstam thus implies that the assimilationists among us are trying to escape from homophobic oppression by jumping onto a sinking ship. She states her purpose:
"The Queer Art of Failure dismantles the logics of success and failure with which we currently live. Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world. Failing is something queers do and have always done exceptionally well; for queers failure can be a style, to cite Quentin Crisp, or a way of life, to cite Foucault, and it can stand in contrast to the grim scenarios of success that depend upon 'trying and trying again.'"
The author, who has written and taught widely on gender formation in a cultural context, aims to analyze "queer" subtexts in a variety of media, from animated movies to performance art to art photography. She shows "queerness" (sexual and emotional proclivities that don't lead to reproductive heterosexual monogamy) as linked to "failure" by the standards of heteronormative, capitalist society. She also shows this "failure" as something which might logically be chosen as preferable to conformist adult life. Along the way, the author critiques the standardized "knowledge" which leads to conformity. If "knowledge" (as disseminated in universities) serves the cultural status quo, the forgetting or losing of knowledge might actually lead to new ways of thinking. To support this point, the amnesia (repeated forgetting and relearning) of central characters in the comedies Dude, Where's My Car? Finding Nemo and Fifty First Dates is discussed as a plot device that leads to new developments.
In her discussion of computer generated imagery in movies aimed at children, the author coins the term "pixarvolt" to define "an animated world rich in political allegory, stuffed to the gills with queerness and rife with analogies between humans and animals."
The author's suggestion that her interdisciplanary approach to "queer failure" should or will be embraced outside the Ivory Tower seems to this reviewer to be the weakest plank in her argument. Like other academics who point out the limitations of the academy, she seems to be trying to move the earth while standing on it.
Halberstam's case for "queer failure" looks counterintuitive, but it is an exhilarating challenge to conventional assumptions, including those made by some "Queer Studies" scholars. In a section on "queerness" and fascism, she critiques the modern assumption of an unbroken history of prominent "queers" as advocates of a liberal agenda of individual (especially sexual) freedom for all. She disentangles homophobia from macho contempt for femininity (associated in Nazi ideology with heterosexual women, Jewish men and homosexual men) in order to show how some "queer," masculine men and women could admire and support totalitarian regimes.
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 watching one of the movies or performances analyzed in its pages.
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May 24, 2016
Having read this book, can you define the titular "queer art of failure"? Me either, and I can't get over the feeling that this book represents five or six essays hastily jammed together under this specious thesis, that somehow they represent a totality other than "some interests Halberstam had at certain points in time." Really really good at providing interesting names of authors and artists on whose work I can follow up, but really really not good, I think, at going from individual, maybe compellingly charged works (vis: "Dude, Where's My Car") to an overall idea that's being traced out of these works. What is the actual line being drawn between skinhead erotica, Cut Piece, Dory from Finding Nemo, and the bros from Dude, Where's My Car? Does "queer art of failure" actually mean something more than "unexpected tricks"? What is queer about it, necessarily? If the art of failure is a successful survival practice, in what way is it a failure? If the thesis is just "sometimes marginalized groups adopt strategies that are not those of normative groups," in what way is this a new thesis? Why does the author think so highly of "Chicken Run"?
I am sympathetic to almost everything in this book, but I feel like the bolts on this needed to be tightened another few cranks maybe?
I am sympathetic to almost everything in this book, but I feel like the bolts on this needed to be tightened another few cranks maybe?
November 24, 2021
Decidir acolher o fracasso como uma maneira de resistir às lógicas neoliberais de sucesso e, dessa maneira, ao neoliberalismo em si, me parece mesmo uma estratégia fascinante e verdadeiramente queer. Uma estratégia inquantificável de estar no mundo: porque não há caixinhas a preencher e nem padrões a conquistar. Simultaneamente, poder escolher o fracasso implica no privilégio de poder escolher. Ou talvez o livro peque em definir mais profundamente o que considera o fracasso ou como esse fracasso poderia não acabar se tornando uma outra forma de nomear o sucesso. Enfim…há importância em buscar maneiras de adquirir uma “consciência oceânica”, mas acho que a maneira como Halberstam conecta suas ideias e vai apresentando seus exemplos não me prendeu tanto.
June 8, 2021
Halberstam is an incredibly seductive & anarchic writer, giving us ways to think through both "low" and "high" theory, cleaving across all sorts of binaries. highly recc—very influenced by how Halberstam writes on modes of queer radical passivity and unbeing/unbelonging.
Halberstam ends their monograph/manifesto(?) thus: "To live is to fail, to bungle, to disappoint, and ultimately to die; rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment, the queer art of failure involves the acceptance of the finite, the embrace of the absurd, the silly, the hopelessly goofy."
Halberstam ends their monograph/manifesto(?) thus: "To live is to fail, to bungle, to disappoint, and ultimately to die; rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment, the queer art of failure involves the acceptance of the finite, the embrace of the absurd, the silly, the hopelessly goofy."
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June 28, 2021biggest takeaway is chicken run > coraline
October 28, 2023
Look...... I'm all for nonsense and abstraction but like..... A thorough analysis of "Dude, Where's My Car?" from a queer perspective, finding symbolism on forgetting as a way to disrupt vertical hegemonic patriarchal transfer of knowledge is an abstraction of nonsense I just can't get behind!
This book has some reaaaally nice commentary on failure vs success and thus the queer vs the norm and it's like a prompt for all of us to like reimagine our realities and strive for other kinds of lives that don't fit normative notions of success. Nice takes on CGI and animation media as a vessel for that, and overall interesting takes on today's world using queer "failure" as a lens. And as a way to link content and form he wants to use other types of knowledge to make a point - i.e. analyzing silly media as a form of "low theory".
I totally get it, I do love looking into media, but the 5-page analyses of "50 First Dates" and "Dude, Where's My Car?" are sooo convoluted, to a ridiculous degree!!!! To me, it all reads like a satire of postmodern academics interpreting and reinterpreting reality, getting lost in the world of ideas and grandiose lexicon.
Tbf, I think this was, at times, too academic for me - I don't read primary texts!!! I watch Youtube videos! I'm just your regular queer girlie yaknow? Maybe many things went over my head. Maybe the whole point was that this was satire! Gosh knows. In the spirit of embracing this piece, I will fully acknowledge my failure at grasping the entire meaning of this book - and that's a-okay!
To end, a really nice quote that I think pretty much summarizes the book's thesis:
"Let's leave success and its achievements to the Republicans, to the corporate managers of the world, to the winners of reality TV shows, to married couples, to SUV drivers. The concept of practicing failure perhaps prompts us to discover our inner dweeb, to be underachievers, to fall short, to get distracted, to take a detour, to find a limit, to lose our way, to forget, to avoid mastery, and, with Walter Benjamin, to recognize that "empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers"."
This book has some reaaaally nice commentary on failure vs success and thus the queer vs the norm and it's like a prompt for all of us to like reimagine our realities and strive for other kinds of lives that don't fit normative notions of success. Nice takes on CGI and animation media as a vessel for that, and overall interesting takes on today's world using queer "failure" as a lens. And as a way to link content and form he wants to use other types of knowledge to make a point - i.e. analyzing silly media as a form of "low theory".
I totally get it, I do love looking into media, but the 5-page analyses of "50 First Dates" and "Dude, Where's My Car?" are sooo convoluted, to a ridiculous degree!!!! To me, it all reads like a satire of postmodern academics interpreting and reinterpreting reality, getting lost in the world of ideas and grandiose lexicon.
Tbf, I think this was, at times, too academic for me - I don't read primary texts!!! I watch Youtube videos! I'm just your regular queer girlie yaknow? Maybe many things went over my head. Maybe the whole point was that this was satire! Gosh knows. In the spirit of embracing this piece, I will fully acknowledge my failure at grasping the entire meaning of this book - and that's a-okay!
To end, a really nice quote that I think pretty much summarizes the book's thesis:
"Let's leave success and its achievements to the Republicans, to the corporate managers of the world, to the winners of reality TV shows, to married couples, to SUV drivers. The concept of practicing failure perhaps prompts us to discover our inner dweeb, to be underachievers, to fall short, to get distracted, to take a detour, to find a limit, to lose our way, to forget, to avoid mastery, and, with Walter Benjamin, to recognize that "empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers"."
April 11, 2012
Completely and totally brain-expandingly awesome.
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May 10, 2021another read for thesis, was interesting
April 4, 2025
The first time I read it was after a conference on philosophy, which inspired me to buy this book. After the first read, I was hooked and it impacted my own growth as a human being, making me aware of finding alternatives to destructive parts of our society. Now, in 2021 after a crazy year, I reread it. I still very much enjoyed it, especially the amazing examples of SpongeBob and Dory in Finding Nemo, animation in general, literature, and contemporary art. For such as short book on such a difficult and wide range of subject dealt with, it is insanely rich and powerful, trying to create weapons out of things many people are looked down at. I loved its ending as well, as something that I see more and more: the acceptance of the finite and that "happiness is not always the best way to be happy."
However, having grown intellectually and having performed much of my own research, I feel that there are some issues with this work: it is too focused on American culture (taking this as the only default and transplanting these ideas to queer identity in general), too reliant on Foucaultian theory, too limited in sources, and at the times fails to deliver the appropriate/sufficient evidence to support the made claims. Indeed, it feels limited to the postmodern school in academia that is relatively strong in contemporary times, but one has to ask if this work would survive the critiques of this school of thought.
However, having grown intellectually and having performed much of my own research, I feel that there are some issues with this work: it is too focused on American culture (taking this as the only default and transplanting these ideas to queer identity in general), too reliant on Foucaultian theory, too limited in sources, and at the times fails to deliver the appropriate/sufficient evidence to support the made claims. Indeed, it feels limited to the postmodern school in academia that is relatively strong in contemporary times, but one has to ask if this work would survive the critiques of this school of thought.
July 15, 2019
I struggled with this one. I wanted to like it and while I liked a portion of it, I failed to see the connection between queer and failure. It does a great job on highlighting the importance of failure, but how that art is specifically queer? Not exactly. Using animation because animation is queer is a stretch because the argument that animation is queer didn’t fully gel. I also take issue (in the days of MAGA) with the connection between queer failure and Nazism. Yes, there were queer nazis and yes there are queer MAGA dicks, but that doesn’t make either of the two “organizations” queer by design. Sigh.
August 29, 2018
Kvir feminizam u verovatno najboljem mogućem obliku (i to kažem kao osoba koja ima beskonačno mnogo rezervi prema kvir teoriji). Beskrajno zabavan, neakademsko-akademski metatekst, interdisciplinarni pristup i sve u svemu optimističan i otvoren pokušaj da se iskoči iz akademizma. Iskreno sam uživala u većem delu knjige i da pišem teoriju, volela bih da pišem ovakvu teoriju.
July 6, 2020
This is the first book on queer theory I've read and really liked it!
It really made me rethink all the animation films I've seen and the messages they contain.
I listened to this on audio, and so I couldn't take notes, but this was REALLY informative and highly recommend it!
It's short and accessible.
It really made me rethink all the animation films I've seen and the messages they contain.
I listened to this on audio, and so I couldn't take notes, but this was REALLY informative and highly recommend it!
It's short and accessible.
August 31, 2019
I am totally behind the premise of this book, but this was almost completely unreadable
February 16, 2023
A very interesting book full of provocative ideas, invariably presented in a highly engaging and readable way. Its essential thesis - that failure can be an act of empowerment, and that ownership of failure can be a countercultural tactic to resist (or entirely reject) structures of power - has been something of a revelation for me, and something that I think I needed to hear at this point in my life.
Halberstam's method of presenting these ideas through discussion of an eclectic range of sources (from Chicken Run to Deleuze - although now the two seem less strongly opposed) is often amusing but also adds great clarity to the central arguments. In the melange of references, individual lines of argument seem to wander and get lost, but somehow something stronger emerges from the rubble, a cohesive narrative of failure. Towards the end of the book, I felt that this potential was not fully explored - the arguments became a bit too linear. In general, though, this was a highly refreshing demonstration of resistance towards academia's tendency towards 'logical' arguments.
As this was more or less my introduction to queer theory, it was clear that many of the references were escaping me. References to Foucault, Butler, othering, the uncanny, performativity, transcendence - these do not miss their mark, but I will have to do more reading to appreciate them fully.
Halberstam's method of presenting these ideas through discussion of an eclectic range of sources (from Chicken Run to Deleuze - although now the two seem less strongly opposed) is often amusing but also adds great clarity to the central arguments. In the melange of references, individual lines of argument seem to wander and get lost, but somehow something stronger emerges from the rubble, a cohesive narrative of failure. Towards the end of the book, I felt that this potential was not fully explored - the arguments became a bit too linear. In general, though, this was a highly refreshing demonstration of resistance towards academia's tendency towards 'logical' arguments.
As this was more or less my introduction to queer theory, it was clear that many of the references were escaping me. References to Foucault, Butler, othering, the uncanny, performativity, transcendence - these do not miss their mark, but I will have to do more reading to appreciate them fully.
April 12, 2022
In this piece, Jack Halberstam looks at queerness and failure in media, and what failure can tell us about queerness and vice versa. I really loved the deep look into animation and other film deemed "low brow". There are so many great themes that we can get from them when we look at them as serious works. Alongside queerness, they also look at political themes that can be seen within these films.
Near the end, he also discusses narrative as it relates to history -- specifically LGBT+ history and the impact of the holocaust. He discusses the issues with some of the narrative of all queer people as victims during this when some gay white masculine men were not subjugated in the same way. While I do think that there are important points to draw out of that, but I have critiques about how it was done and what issues didn't get prioritized in the conversation. While I do understand why this was brought up, I think it could have been integrated better; it felt more shoehorned in than the other chapters.
But overall, this was a very interesting book. I really loved the media critique and the variety of conversation about queerness and failure was fascinating
Near the end, he also discusses narrative as it relates to history -- specifically LGBT+ history and the impact of the holocaust. He discusses the issues with some of the narrative of all queer people as victims during this when some gay white masculine men were not subjugated in the same way. While I do think that there are important points to draw out of that, but I have critiques about how it was done and what issues didn't get prioritized in the conversation. While I do understand why this was brought up, I think it could have been integrated better; it felt more shoehorned in than the other chapters.
But overall, this was a very interesting book. I really loved the media critique and the variety of conversation about queerness and failure was fascinating
June 18, 2022
3.5/4? i like a lot of the ideas, but the way some of them are illustrated isn’t particularly effective for me as someone who hasn’t seen a lot of childrens animation. the little references to zines and BLaB were fun for me
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December 25, 2019Not gonna go watch Chicken Run now, or Dude Where's My Car.
But I do love failure.
But I do love failure.
February 4, 2024
Muy chulo. Hay partes que sinceramente tengo que releer. Aún así, los temas tratados han sido una batería de ideas muy sugerentes para el conflicto contemporáneo del orden mundial y sus problemáticas desde la perspectiva queer. El camino de deconstruirse y aceptar que todos tenemos la heteronorma y el fascismo en nuestras pieles es algo largo y difícil, por eso creo que encontrar un libro como este es algo guay para repensar y reconfigurar el cómo somos, qué hacemos y con qué pensamos, aceptando e interiorizando la derrota y sus dinámicas. Chulooooo
December 26, 2015
"To live is to fail, to bungle, to disappoint, and ultimately to die; rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment, the queer art of failure involves the acceptance of the finite, the embrace of the absurd, the silly, and the hopelessly goofy. Rather than resisting endings and limits, let us instead revel in and cleave to all of our own inevitable fantastic failures."
June 23, 2019
Spectacular!! It just kept getting better. Although, I still can't stomach psychoanalytic modes of theory. Some people might find what Halberstam is doing here a bit tough to take (the citations of Avital Ronell, the pairing of children's animation with high art, the tearing down or queer narratives of innocence and victimization), but I found it a joy.
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