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的位置 - 我们在其中包括乌托邦式的虚构叙事，以及在生活和管理中进行激进的实验。具体来说，我们将探讨失败对乌托邦的贡献，以便不仅将崩溃，破裂和未能实现的目标视为行动的限制，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接近乌托邦与失败之间的关系。（1）乌托邦的思想和社区被视为提供救济并避开主流生活的竞争性二元组，在这种情况下，有些人被视为失败的特征，而其他人则表现为成功（或成就者）。可以内置在有组织的乌托邦和激进活动中，以保护其他更重要的目的。这可能涉及建立故意的断层线或“碎片区域”；它还可以包括自我批评的审议和情感过程。概念化如何理解和制定失败，以使其生产能力提前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转变重新评估事件（例如，失败可能在更长的时间内看起来有所不同），以及探索可能放弃的创新思想在时间和空间之间如何重新补充。网络还将调查激进主义者，情感和组织响应失败的感觉。这些范围从导致创新项目的沮丧感到重新制作和修改日常乌托邦，这是由于了解到实现追求之后的失败的学习所引起的。本文中，该网络将探索乌托邦对失败的精神可能产生的方式。这可能包括对失败的集体和个人经历（追求激进创新和乌托邦实践）的友善和关心。它还可能包括以拒绝，集体和个体的胜利来塑造的新方式接近失败。这些是我们社会中通常会积极看待的素质或成就。相比之下，采用乌托邦式，更积极的精神对失败，可以支持尝试（DIY政治或修补），抵制失败的使用作为一种羞耻标签，这种羞耻标签劝阻其结果不确定的尝试，并支持“业余”和违反直觉的做法，包括通过游戏或通过必要失败的实验。