Performance Research Volume 17 Issue 1

On Failure

Issue editors: Róisín O'Gorman & Margaret Werry

ISSN: 1352-8165 (2012) 17:1

To speak of failure is to invite stigma; yet failure saturates our lives, shapes our experience and delineates the contours of our institutions. This special issue aims to face failure head on, to study, theorize, even cultivate it, to see if performance might provide us with a metaphor and methodology for failure. Focusing in particular on pedagogy, these essays, dialogues, ethnographies and theoretical reflections tap the analytic power of failure to chart the social, political, and affective terrain in which we teach and perform. For these authors, failure is neither a dead end nor a pit stop on the path to success, but a generative, subversive force.

On Failure (On Pedagogy): Editorial Introduction

Róisín O'Gorman, Margaret Werry

pp. 1 - 8

[artist's Images]

Vlatka Horvat

pp. 2 - 7

Navigation, Nuance And Half/Angel's Knitting Map: A Series Of Navigational Directions

Jools Gilson

pp. 9 - 20

Four More Years Of Economics #9 And #10: Homo Bulla - The Ethics And Aesthetics Of Failure, And After The Jungle - Murder Mystery: An Economics And Performance Letter-Writing Project

Abhay Ghiara, Matthew Goulish

pp. 21 - 32

In The Silences: A Text With Very Many Digressions And Forty-Three Footnotes Concerning The Process Of Making Performance

Tim Etchells

pp. 33 - 37

Casual Racism And Stuttering Failures: An Ethics For Classroom Engagement

Jill Dolan

pp. 38 - 46

Embracing Failure Though Performative Pedagogy: A Report From The Margins

Jocelyn Mckinnon, Sean Lowry

pp. 47 - 50

Crash Knowledge: Pretending To Be A Professor Who Fails

Ricardo Dominguez

pp. 51 - 58

[artist's Images]

Vlatka Horvat

pp. 58

Stupid, Paranoid, Wonderful: Staging Non-Knowledges In The Pedagogical Encounter

Johanna Linsley

pp. 59 - 67

Unpicking Stage Deixis: The Chairs And The Aesthetics Of Failure

Cormac Power

pp. 68 - 76

The Rake's Progress: A Series Of Drawings Of The Fall Into The Academic Well Or The Sorry Attempt To Enlighten The Undergraduate Mind [artist's Pages]

Michael Sommers

pp. 77 - 78

Failure As Success: On Clowns And Laughing Bodies

Eric Weitz

pp. 79 - 87

When Failure Means Success: Music, Movement, Ritual And Facilitation With Middle East Youth And Ucla Students : a dialogue with Sonja Arsham Kuftinec

John Wesley Days Jr

pp. 88 - 96

Freedom To Fail: The Unintended Consequences Of A Prison Drama

David Grant, with J.M. Crossan

pp. 97 - 100

On Failing Failure: A Letter To Margaret Werry

Rustom Barucha

pp. 101 - 104

The Anatomy Of Failure: An Inventory

Margaret Werry, Róisín O'Gorman

pp. 105 - 112

[artist's Images]

Vlatka Horvat

pp. 111 - 112

One Night In Motley Cow: Grotowski And Nietzsche

Murray Edmond

pp. 113 - 125

Anti 2011, Kuopio, Finland: 27 September - 2 October 2011

David Williams

pp. 126 - 132

Notes On Contributors

pp. 133 - 134