This little book is the only instruction book you'll ever need about how to avoid failing by default. You'll learn how to fail on purpose, with dash.
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- The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer: Lee Thayer Discusses Leadership
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- The Queer Art of Failure
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. 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.
- How Executives Fail?
- Lectures on Corporate Finance.
- Bobby and the Drug Store Robbery.
- FBI, the Mob, and Treachery?
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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. 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. View all 3 comments. Aug 29, Weltschmerz rated it it was amazing Shelves: Jun 07, Heather rated it it was amazing. Everyone was laughing and saying, so true! Jan 29, Michael Dipietro rated it liked it Shelves: I read most of this book and then got a little bored. Instead, it offered a bunch of essays about other queer stuff.
Which were sortof interesting, but again, didn't drive I read most of this book and then got a little bored. 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.
Mar 26, lindy rated it it was amazing. Completely and totally brain-expandingly awesome. Sep 15, Amy P. Failing never felt so good! Being a failure never made me feel like such a winner. Halberstam does an excellent job of looking at how queers are failures in society to begin with and that there is not necessarily nowhere to go up, but everywhere to go different.
Unlike a lot of her other books Halberstam does a good job of staying relevant in her writing to her overarching theory. She uses modern art, in particular to this book animation to illuminate her theory. This is by far her best book to Failing never felt so good! This is by far her best book to date. Sep 16, Karli rated it really liked it. I really liked the ideas in this book -- thinking about queer failure, forgetting, and unbecoming in politically productive ways. However, I think some of Halberstam's readings are a bit of a stretch, and overall, the book feels a little erratic, and might have benefited from a little extra editing.
Aside from that, it's very readable, and as always, Halberstam has plenty of provocative things to say about disciplinarity, method, and flaws of the academy. Dec 26, Stephanie Kelley rated it really liked it. I came to this book expecting a lot of things. As a student in queer theory, I am used to the polemical approach adopted by Halberstam's contemporaries - this is the mode that characterises and separates this field from many others. In this way, I was, as Halberstam would have it, disappointed.
Much less a polemic for failure than an intriguing exploration of it, I felt that this book was not quite finished. The chapters are not cohesively tied together; the use of theory sometimes felt like a h I came to this book expecting a lot of things. The chapters are not cohesively tied together; the use of theory sometimes felt like a half-decision, and was often clumsy; and the idea of 'failure' was constantly negotiated, as opposed to an offer of a resolute way of being in the world.
This is a thoroughly academic exercise in mapping failure onto queer theory's subversive sensibilities, and succeeds to varying degrees. However, its dubious conviction is forgiven, as her analysis of Finding Nemo had me absolutely hooked. I knew this film said something as a kid, and Halberstam articulates this kind of childlike reasoning wonderfully. Her analysis of Chicken Run is equally as sparky and fresh. The opening chapters feel truly original, childishly indignant and hopeful. The latter chapters do slip - the insight into 'gay nazism' gets a little strange - but, by the end, I was holding this book, and thanking it for telling us queers that it is okay to fail.
In a world where queers often have to hide in order to succeed, Halberstam's sentiment was not lost on me. Perhaps I'll no longer say 'sorry, I'm so sorry' to my supervisors, when I'm struggling to articulate how angry this world makes me, and let the words fail for a minute instead. Jul 18, Kaitlin Blanchard rated it really liked it. Try as he might, Halberstam cannot outpace the archival fever which counter-animates the book's core conceptual motif of forgetting as method.
The book is marked in its failure to engage disability, an absence which haunts its appreciation of stupidity as chastened agency and a revision of heroic rebellion. Worth reading for the range of topics it brings together, but doesn't quite succeed at reaching a general audience as it claims to. The book left me frustrated a number of times. Ultimately and as a born complainer I appreciated its themes anti-achievement, pro-negativity and its critiques, but there were parts I found lacking. I don't think Halberstam makes the argument coherent at all failure is good because it's anti-positive, unless it's GWB's brand of failure?
And I was convinced the book was older than it was because for all the focus on narratives of failure and achievement, wouldn't "Yes we can" seem an obvious place to go? Yet it is never touched upon. That said, the book could be productively used to talk about a Sheryl Sandberg and her "Lean In"-type of feminism fauxminism?
The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer: Lee Thayer Discusses Leadership
May 23, Jeanne Thornton rated it liked it. 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. 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? Aug 07, Jamie Hall rated it really liked it. I'll preface this by saying that this is the first book of queer theory that I have read, so I don't have much to compare it to. I enjoyed The Queer Art of Failure for the following reasons: Jun 14, Mandy rated it it was ok.
Moreover, she pushes for an unreasonable but admittedly theoretically desirable approach to academia. It's all well and good to argue for "antidisciplinarity" from a cushy tenured position, but no english grad student has a chance of getting a job in such a field at least not until academic institutions fundamentally reorganize themselves. Jun 05, Kim Anderson rated it really liked it. This is a fascinating insight into the virtues of failure. In a capitalist system, we are faced with a binary of specific success and failure, and sometimes refusing to follow the conventional path to "success" we can stage small or large acts of revolution.
Halberstam examines a broad cross-section of "failure" narratives, from Pixar films which hold much commentary of hope to erotic-fascist art.
We face our discomfort and we don't conquer it--we don't need to. Oct 29, Anna rated it liked it Shelves: Jan 29, Matty rated it it was amazing. This is one of those books that you get upset when you reach the last chapter because you don't want it to end. Halbertams writing style is as if she is sitting next to you explaining everything. Definitely going to follow up with some of her sources and her other books. Dec 01, Shanna rated it it was amazing. Jun 18, Brent rated it it was amazing. Oct 01, Paulina rated it really liked it.
Perhaps most obviously, failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behaviour and manage human development with the goal of delivering us from unruly childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods. Failure preserves some of the wondrous anarchy of childhood and disturbs the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and children, winners and losers. And while failure certainly comes accompanied by a host of negative affects, such "What kinds of reward can failure offer us?
And while failure certainly comes accompanied by a host of negative affects, such as disappointment, disillusionment, and despair, it also provides the opportunity to use these negative affects to poke holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life. Positive thinking is offered up in the U. Sep 18, Dangling rated it it was amazing. This is one of the best books I have read in ages. Halberstam's style is great - casual, humorous and biting. Sometimes it's deceptively casual. I often underestimated the focus I would need for the complex ideas covered through this book.
This was also because of the diversity of the source material she uses, from animated children's films to artworks to theory to Dude where's my car and so on.
However, that diversity of texts was one of my favourite things about reading this book. What a rolle This is one of the best books I have read in ages. Often with books like these, the author states an argument in the beginning and precedes to repeat them with slightly different elaborations in each chapter. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. A Trove of Virtuoso Ideas. Customers who bought this item also bought. A Pocket Oracle for Leaders. Sponsored products related to this item What's this? Do you often struggle with self-doubt and fear of failure?
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The Queer Art of Failure
About the Author Lee Thayer is widely-known throughout the world for his work as a CEO coach, and as the leading consultant in making high-performance organizations. August 24, Language: Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video.
Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. There is nothing glib about the piercing insight this book offers. And while this is an easy read, meaning it is not dense with theory or case studies - it draws clear attention to unobvious wisdom from behaviors we all readily recognize in ourselves and others.
The chapters literally beg you to take a deep-dive beneath the surface with a depth of thinking that will take you beyond the words on the page - and onto a journey of self-examination that anyone who is - or aspires to be an effective leader must take. Lee Thayer makes accessible what every good leader needs to know - without presuming that by simply doing so he will evoke or facilitate any change - instead sticking to his hard-won and field-tested understandings that thinking about what needs thinking about can lead to being what you need to be in order to do what needs to be done