Katharina Motyl & Regina Schober 
The Failed Individual 
Amid Exclusion, Resistance, and the Pleasure of Non-Conformity

Scheitern ist in Mode: Immer offener wird in den USA über den Konkurs der eigenen Firma und (überwundene) Lebenskrisen gesprochen. Auch in der Wissenschaft hat das Thema Konjunktur. Dieser Band untersucht das individuelle Scheitern interdisziplinär. Was verstehen wir unter einem ‘gescheiterten Individuum ‘, welche sozioökonomischen und technologischen Faktoren tragen dazu bei? Wie wird das Scheitern kulturell verhandelt, und inwiefern kann man es als Widerstand gegen gesellschaftliche Normen umdeuten?

Table of Content

Contents

Acknowledgments9

Introduction: The Failed Individual11
Susanne Hamscha, Katharina Motyl, and Regina Schober

I. Theoretical Perspectives on Failure

Sometimes You Just Fail: Protest and the Policing of Bad Feeling31
Christopher Taylor

The Primordial Failure: A Cultural-Philosophical Analysis53
Bina Nir

Failure in Economics: A Black-Box73
Hannes Lang and Eva Lang

II. Determinants of Failure: Structures, Normativity, and Power

Destined to Fail: Cosmetic Surgery, Female Body Images,
and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birth-mark’99
Johannes Fehrle

Disability Aesthetics and Vandalism in American Visual Culture119
Susanne Hamscha

Wohnkultur and Zombification: Trying to Unfail the Homeless Individual139
Wibke Schniedermann

Failed by the Criminal Justice System: The Hyperincarceration
of the Black Urban Poor in the ‘War on Drugs?163
Katharina Motyl

III. Failure as Resistance / Failure as Pleasure

‘Hanging on?: Mohawk Sovereignty and the Art of Failure189
Astrid M. Fellner

The Addict’s Ethics of Failure: Resistance to Ambition in the Photographic Work of Larry Clark205
Florian Zappe

‘Here is the trash heap, nothing there except a muted wailing?:
Dithering in Negativity and the Failure to Move on223
Marius Henderson

Failure as an Ethical Choice: Academic Resistance against
Authoritarian Academic Systems245
Mahmoud Arghavan

IV. Failure in American Literary History
Surviving on Wrecked Ships: The Failing Individual in Edgar Allan
Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)267
Dietmar Meinel

Naturalism and the Aesthetics of Failure287
James Dorson

Productively Failing to Accelerate: Mary Borden’s Alternative
Vision of Existing Successfully in Modern America305
Svenja Fehlhaber

The Failed Individual and the Biopolitics of Climate Catastrophe
in Edan Lepucki’s California (2014)329
Susanne Leikam

V. Failure and the Digital Subject
Narcissus Confirmed: Technologies of the Minimal Selfie347
Geert Lovink

Failing by Design: Self-Tracking and the Failed Individual357
James Dyer

Failure Blogs and the Confessional Self375
Regina Schober

Contributors393

About the author

Katharina Motyl, Dr. phil., ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Universität Tübingen.
Regina Schober, Dr. phil., ist Akademische Rätin an der Universität Mannheim.