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

这个网络及其活动的目的是重新评估乌托邦中的失败之处--其中包括乌托邦的虚构叙事，以及生活和统治中的激进实验。具体地说，我们将探讨失败对乌托邦的贡献，使失败、破裂和未实现的目标不仅被视为行动的限制，因此失败可以支持而不是破坏乌托邦的思想和实践。这个网络和活动以三种相互关联的方式探讨乌托邦和失败之间的关系。(1)乌托邦的想法和社区被视为提供了解脱和庇护，远离主流生活的竞争两难境地，在主流生活中，一些人被描述为失败，而另一些人被描述为成功(或成就者)。(2)乌托邦和激进的实验被认为是失败的，当它们失败、终止活动或根本无法实现他们的抱负时。(3)失败可以被构建成有组织的乌托邦和激进的活动，以保护其他更重要的目的。这可能涉及到创建故意的断层线或“褶皱地带”，也可能包括深思熟虑的和情绪化的自我批评过程。重新概念化如何理解和实施失败，以突出其生产性功能，涉及到该网络将探索的一系列策略。其中包括时间和空间尺度的转变，以重新评估事件(例如，失败可能在更长的时间范围内看起来不同)，以及探索可能已经被抛弃的创新想法如何在时间和空间上重新被采用。网络还将调查失败感觉产生的激进主义、情感和组织反应。从导致创新项目被放弃的挫败感，到重塑和修改日常乌托邦，这些都是因为人们认识到，在实现梦寐以求的目标方面的失败可能会产生。最后，该网络将探索面向失败的乌托邦精神可能会带来什么。这可能包括善意和关心集体和个人的失败经历(在追求激进创新和乌托邦实践的过程中)。它还可以包括以集体和个人拒绝胜利的新方式来对待失败。因此，重新评估和重新定义失败的概念也会成为成功和胜利的关键。这些品质或成就在我们的社会中通常是被正面看待的。相比之下，对失败采取一种乌托邦的、更积极的态度可以支持尝试尝试(自己动手政治或修修补补)，抵制将失败作为耻辱标签来阻止结果不确定的尝试，并支持“业余”和反直觉的做法，包括通过玩耍或通过必然会失败的实验。

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.