The Queer Art of Failure

Non-life, Failure, Darkness, Taboo

Overarching Concepts

• Choosing non-life and embracing darkness
• Negative space and unbecoming
• [Taboo] Desire and context

Success in Capitalism

Winners:
accumulate wealth
are recorded and vocal
are optimistic

Failure in Capitalism

Losers:
dissipate wealth
leave no records
are pessimistic

Success and Heteronormativity:

Productive (family, work)
Ethical
Hopeful
Linear
Futuristic
Light (recognized)
Proud
Positive
Whole
Active
Clear

Failure and Queer:

Anti-reproductive/sterile
Unethical
Critical
Non-linear
No future
Dark (unrecognized)
Shameful
Negative
Fragmented
Inactive/Passive
Confused/Obscure

"weapons of the weak"


“re-categorize what looks like inaction, passivity, and lack of resistance in terms of the practice of stalling the business of the dominant… Failure as a way of refusing to acquiesce to the dominant logics of power” (88)

Choosing Non-life

“Trainspotting envisions drugs, theft, and violence as the ‘weapons of the weak’ utilized by the colonized and working-class males of Edinburgh.” (90)

Embracing failure and darkness

“failure presents an opportunity rather than a dead end; the queer artist works with rather than against failure and inhabits darkness.” (96)

“for Edelman the queer is always and inevitably linked to the death drive [...] and Edelman uses this sense of the queer in order to propose a relentless form of negativity in place of the forward-looking, reproductive, and heteronormative politics of hope” (106)

“The queer subject, [Edelman] argues, has been bound epistemologically to negativity, to nonsense, to anti-production, and to unintelligibility, and instead of fighting this characterization by dragging queerness into recognition, he proposes that we embrace the negativity" (106)

From Inflammatory Essays by Jenny Holzer

From Inflammatory Essays by Jenny Holzer

Shadow Feminism

Shadow Feminism:

"the negation of the subject rather than her formation, the disruption of the lineage rather than its continuation” (126)

Liberal feminist inheritance perpetuates patriarchy:

daughter ----- mother
colonized ----- colonizer
youth ----- elder

The problem of liberal feminism:


"presumes the form that agency must take" (127)

"claim[s] to speak for the subaltern or to demand that the
subaltern speak in the active voice of Western feminism" (128)

Shadow Feminism:

"negation, refusal, passivity, absence, silence" (124)

"unknowing, failing, forgetting" (124)

"[antisocial] masochism and passivity" (140)

"In a performance of radical passivity we witness the willingness of the subject to actually come undone" (140)

Masochism in the form of "cleaving to that which seems to shame or annihilate" (144)

Yoko Ono's Cut Piece

Kara Walker's A Subtlety or Sugar Baby

Desire and Context

“You could say that gay and lesbian scholars have also hidden history, unsavory histories, and have a tendency to select from historical archives only the narratives that please.” (148)

"Queer negativity" can counter the “homogenous model of gay identity,” the narrative in which the “queer victim stands up to his or her oppressors and emerges a hero” (149)

The narrative ignores the “mechanics of the history of sexuality” where marginalized subjects have participated in and endorsed “the very systems that marginalize [these marginalized groups]” (150)

“That which seems off-limits becomes sexy, and in indulging our interest in the taboo we feel naughty” (150)

Tom of Finland

Tom of Finland

"The Nazi philosophy is hateful to me...

“We cannot be sure that all of our interests in erotic material are politically innocent [...] I want to understand why we cannot tolerate the linking of our desires to politics that disturb us.” (153)

Collier Schorr

Discussion Questions

Paul Wong: 60 Unit Bruise


How does this film embrace failure and/or darkness to resist or disrupt dominant/heteronormative power structures?

Orange is the New Black:

Does this show function as queer art embracing darkness, negativity, and unbecoming, or does it maintain dominant/heteronormative expectations of positivity and futurity?

Fifty Shades of Grey:

Can you separate context from desire?