This panel interrogates failure to unearth fresh perspectives on literary aesthetics and structures, as well as possibilities of becoming that might otherwise be hidden, buried, or erased in the pursuit of success. In the space between intention and outcome, theoretical and narratological possibilities can come into view, offering “the alternatives” that Jack Halberstam calls for in The Queer Art of Failure (2011). The panelists demonstrate that these alternatives include ontologies, subjectivities, and re-conceptualizations that may be missed in the current world-system of capital and aesthetic appreciation. The panel argues that what is considered failure is a function of an individual’s lived experience conditioned by the socio-cultural and economic hegemonies in which they exist. The speakers point to ways that cultural norms, genre tropes, and even dialectical relations can block creative and critical opportunities. If New Materialist theorists are right to suggest that narratological elements are already in intra-active, participatory agential relation, then paradigms that reduce story engagement to binarial fault lines of conquest or mistake can, paradoxically, serve as openings for creative and critical insight. Together, the panelists demonstrate that the failure of art, writing, and the characters that populate them to meet universalized and ahistorical standards can provoke, in fact, fresh creative and critical approaches, methods, and strategies.

The first presenter, Christian Moraru, argues that “to fail with method” turns the tables on fiasco, harnessing its energetic potential to an ultimately productive poetics and possibly an empowering politics. The failure of art—de-formed, vandalized, or no longer valuable—may point to futures beyond those ruled by marketplace and normative aesthetic recipes. If Adam Colman is right when he argues in New Uses for Failure (2018) that failing is something of a given, then writers and critics are charged to “mak[e] the most of your failure.” It is through the extremities of their failures, Ben Lerner writes in The Hatred of Poetry (2016), that poets, for example, can serve an “outside” potential beyond borders as a stepping-stone to poetic accomplishment. (Approx. 15 minutes)

The second presenter, Ayoung Seok, extends this outsider methodology into a critical analysis of detective-genre structure and form. Seok focuses on Rudolph Fisher’s Harlem Renaissance–era detective novel, The Conjure Man Dies (1934). If identifying the criminal is the one thing detectives must succeed at, Fisher’s fail. According to Seok, one way that Fisher subverts the genre’s structure is by disrupting who seeks to solve the crime. Instead of a lone crime-solver, Conjure deploys a community of African-American detectives. This structural move directly challenges Edgar Allen Poe’s founding image of a racialized normative trope, the sole intellectual genius—predominantly white. In these ways, Fisher undermines the well-functioning dialogic rationalities structurally implicit in detective fiction. Seok argues that Poe’s literary inheritors indulged the failures of their Caucasian detectives with nostalgic pessimism. But Fisher’s detectives exemplify the very possibility for “the alternatives” called for by Halberstam and others. (Approx. 15 minutes)

thom vernon’s talk extends the discussion of aesthetic and structural disruption to examine the intra-active, participatory agential relations that constitute sites of narratological and characterological failure. Cued by Seok’s “dialogic rationalities,” vernon offers a creative and critical analysis of binarial relations to reveal ways of literary being and existing, and narratological elements otherwise obscured. Inspired by Halberstam, feminist physicist and philosopher Karen Barad, and others, vernon’s theoretical starting point, “Hegel’s wound,” queers narrative dialectics by attending to the shock of becoming. Such shocks can invite possibilities of acceptance and transcendence as literary subjects turn away from binarial formations. But where there is gain, there is loss. Michel Foucault captures the ethics of this dilemma in The Hermeneutics of the Subject (1982): “What shall we do so that the self becomes and remains what it ought to be?” By theorizing the unthinkable subjectivities, ontologies, narratological relations, and associative elements among which selving, resistance, and acceptance may thrive, vernon demonstrates how Halberstam’s “alternatives” might come into view. (Approx. 15 minutes)

Presider Alyse Knorr will then offer a brief statement distilling the creative and critical threads that distinguish and connect the presentations from her perspective. (Approx. 5 minutes) Next, in conversation, panelists will briefly highlight points of interest and intersection in each other’s presentations. (Approx. 10 minutes) Finally, the floor will be opened for audience questions and discussions. (Approx. 15 minutes)