Fail Again, Fail Better? Recuperating Failure in Utopian Politics and Research

再次失败，失败得更好吗？

• 批准号: AH/X009122/1
• 负责人: Mathias Thaler
• 金额: $ 4.54万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX009122%2F1
• 关键词: Fail; Again; Better; Recuperating; Failure

The aim of this network and its activities is to re-evaluate the place of failure in utopia - by which we include both utopian fictional narratives, and radical experiments in living and governing. Specifically, we will explore the contribution that failure makes to utopia so that breakdown, rupture, and unachieved goals are not seen only as limits on action, so failure can support utopian thinking and practice rather than undermine it. The network and activities approach the relationship between utopia and failure in three interrelated ways.(1) Utopian ideas and communities are seen as providing relief and shelter from the competitive dyad of mainstream life, where some people get characterised as failures while others are characterised as successful (or as achievers).(2) Failure is seen to happen to utopian and radical experiments, when they break down, terminate their activities, or simply fail to achieve their ambition.(3) failure can be built into organised utopian and radical activities to protect other, more important ends. This can involve creating deliberate fault-lines or 'crumple zones'; it can also include deliberative and affective processes of self-critique.Re-conceptualising how failure is understood and enacted so as to foreground its productive function involves a range of strategies that the network will explore. These include shifts in temporal and spatial scale to re-evaluate events (e.g., failures may look different over a longer timeframe), and exploration of how innovative ideas that may have been abandoned get re-adopted across time and space.The network will also investigate the activist, affective and organisational responses that feelings of failure generate. These range from feelings of discouragement that lead innovative projects to be dropped to remaking and revising everyday utopias, prompted by the learning that perceived failures in achieving sought-after goals can generate.Finally, the network will explore what a utopian ethos towards failure might entail. This could include kindness and care towards both collective and individual experiences of failing (in the pursuit of radical innovation and utopian practices). It could also include approaching failure in new ways shaped by a refusal, collectively and individually, to win.Thus, re-evaluating and reconceptualising failure also turns a critical light on success and winning. These are qualities or achievements that are typically viewed positively in our society. Adopting a utopian, more positive ethos towards failure, by contrast, can support trying things out (DIY politics or tinkering), resist the use of failure as a shame-label that discourages attempts whose outcome is uncertain, and support 'amateur' and counter-intuitive practices, including through play or through experiments that will necessarily fail.

该网络及其活动的目的是重新评估乌托邦的失败之处——我们将乌托邦的虚构叙事以及生活和治理中的激进实验纳入其中。具体来说，我们将探讨失败对乌托邦的贡献，使崩溃、破裂和未实现的目标不仅仅被视为行动的限制，因此失败可以支持乌托邦的思维和实践，而不是破坏它。网络和活动以三种相互关联的方式探讨乌托邦与失败之间的关系。(1) 乌托邦思想和社区被视为为主流生活的竞争性二元关系提供救济和庇护所，在主流生活中，一些人被描述为失败，而另一些人则被描述为失败。成功者（或成就者）。（2）失败被视为发生在乌托邦和激进的实验中，当它们崩溃、终止他们的活动，或者只是未能实现他们的抱负时。（3）失败可以被构建到有组织的乌托邦和激进的实验中保护他人的活动，更重要的目的。这可能涉及故意制造断层线或“溃缩区”；它还可以包括自我批评的深思熟虑和情感过程。重新概念化如何理解和实施失败，以突出其生产功能，涉及网络将探索的一系列策略。其中包括时间和空间尺度的变化以重新评估事件（例如，在较长的时间范围内，失败可能看起来有所不同），以及探索可能已被放弃的创新想法如何跨时间和空间重新采用。该网络还将调查失败感产生的积极、情感和组织反应。这些范围包括导致创新项目被放弃的沮丧感，到重塑和修改日常乌托邦的感觉，这是由于认识到在实现所追求的目标方面可能会出现失败而产生的。最后，该网络将探讨失败的乌托邦精神可能会带来什么。这可能包括对集体和个人失败经历（追求激进创新和乌托邦实践）的善意和关怀。它还可能包括以集体和个人拒绝获胜的新方式来应对失败。因此，重新评估和重新概念化失败也成为成功和获胜的关键一盏灯。这些品质或成就通常在我们的社会中被积极看待。相比之下，对失败采取乌托邦式的、更积极的态度，可以支持尝试事物（DIY政治或修补），抵制使用失败作为耻辱标签，阻止结果不确定的尝试，并支持“业余”和反驳- 直观的实践，包括通过游戏或通过必然会失败的实验。