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.

这个网络及其活动的目的是重新评估乌托邦中失败的地方-通过它，我们既包括乌托邦式的虚构叙事，也包括生活和治理方面的激进实验。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想和实践，而不是破坏它。(1)乌托邦思想和社区被视为从主流生活的竞争二元中提供救济和庇护，其中一些人被描述为失败者，而另一些人则被描述为成功者（或成就者）。(2)当乌托邦式和激进的实验失败时，它们就会崩溃，终止活动，或者只是未能实现自己的抱负。(3)失败可能会成为有组织的乌托邦和激进活动，以保护其他更重要的目标。这可能涉及到创建故意的断层线或“褶皱区”;它也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。这些包括时间和空间尺度的变化，以重新评估事件（例如，失败在较长的时间内可能看起来不同），并探索可能已经被放弃的创新想法如何在时间和空间上被重新采用。该网络还将调查失败感产生的积极，情感和组织反应。从导致创新项目被放弃的沮丧情绪，到重新制定和修改日常乌托邦，这都是由于了解到在实现追求的目标时可能会出现的失败而引起的。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的善意和关怀（在追求激进创新和乌托邦实践中）。它还可能包括以新的方式对待失败，这种方式是由集体和个人拒绝胜利所形成的。因此，重新评估和重新定义失败也会对成功和胜利产生重要影响。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（DIY政治或修补），抵制将失败作为一个不确定的标签来阻止结果不确定的尝试，支持“业余”和反直觉的做法，包括通过游戏或必然失败的实验。