Marianna Szczygielska, Department of Gender Studies, Central European University

Judith Jack Halberstam. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 224 pp. Paperback. ISBN: 9780822350453

Why would anyone devote their of dead white philosophers, she time to a project on failure? Judith provocatively quotes SpongeBob Halberstam has willfully taken the SquarePants and The Sex Pistols. risk of not being taken seriously. From the animated revolt of cartoon Her new book is dedicated to ‘all of characters, through stupid come- history’s losers’ – it brushes the dust dies for adolescent males and Val- from the forgotten archives of those erie Solanas’ anti-male manifesto, who seemingly do not write history. to Yoko Ono and queer artists who Yet the aim of this truly inspiring strive to capture unbecoming, The and thought-provoking publication Queer Art of Failure strikes with an- is not to rescue any alternative vi- ti-heroines and anti-heroes making sions or forms of knowledge from a detour from the conventional, aca- the bottomless pit of oblivion. The demic, proper mode of writing the- Queer Art of Failure celebrates for- ory. Halberstam avoids fetishizing getfulness, spectacular failure and or glorifying the queer rebellion, re- outlawed absurdity. In this sense it sistance and counterhegemony. Al- is rather an anti-archive manifesto though some of the chapters of the that looks for a political alternative in book were available before in other ‘low theory’ and what she calls ‘silly edited volumes such as Queering archives’ (Halberstam 2011, 19). In the Non/human (Giffney and Hird a witty style, Halberstam dismantles 2008) or in articles (Halberstam the overwhelming logic of success 2008), the framework of failure as a that is inevitably linked to the capi- new iteration of the anti-social turn talist mode of production and het- in queer theory proposed by Hal- eronormative hegemony. Instead of berstam forms a very coherent and guiding this journey with a pantheon powerful structure. In each chapter

Graduate Journal of Social Science June 2012, Vol. 9, Issue 2 © 2012 by Graduate Journal of Social Science. All Rights Reserved. ISSN: 1572-3763 236 GJSS Vol 9, Issue 2 she boldly outlines queer theory’s queerness. In The Queer Art of Fail- relation towards cultural phenom- ure Halberstam goes even further ena that can be easily dismissed as and questions the normativity of the unacademic, childish, insignificant humanness for the purpose of argu- or even as racist and homophobic ing for failure as a truly queer way (e.g. the movie Dude, Where’s my of life. Car?) The first chapter introduces a In a neoliberal system that rests lively menagerie of both animated upon the idea that every individual and blood-and-flesh species that is an architect of his or her own for- in Halberstam’s analysis grace- tune, behind every winner, there is a fully transcend the hetero-familial crowd of losers. From the introduc- schemes of reproductive and pro- tion onwards Halberstam argues ductive imperatives. With creatures that it is exactly this pressure to be like a Hegelian possum from the successful along with the desire animated movie Over the Hedge, to be taken seriously that makes ‘feminist’ chickens from Chicken people stay on well-trodden paths, Run and ‘gay’ penguins from the instead of exploring unknown ter- New York Zoo, Halberstam vividly ritories of alternative knowledges and convincingly shows that larger- and queer strategies of unknow- than-human worlds are not only a ing. She even writes that ‘failing valuable source of critiques of capi- is something queers do and have talism, of the heteronormative order always done exceptionally well’ and of kinship structures, but that (Halberstam 2011, 3). This state- they also offer alternative scenarios ment raises some questions: Why of an anarcho-queer revolt. It might would queers serve as scapegoats? seem counterintuitive or even dan- Can somebody excel at failing and gerous to engage in an argument should we then treat it as a form of that links animals and queerness. success? For Sara Ahmed, to queer Greta Gaard in her article ‘Toward something is to disturb the order of a Queer Ecofeminism’ warns that things (Ahmed 2006, 161). Accord- ‘queers are feminized, animalized, ing to Lauren Berlant and Michael eroticized, and naturalized in a cul- Warner the ‘queer world is a space ture that devalues women, animals, of entrances, exits, unsystematized and sexuality’ (Gaard 1997, 119). lines of acquaintance, projecting ho- However, Halberstam explores this rizons, typifying examples, alternate connection amidst its negative con- routes, blockages, incommensurate notations in order to un-think mod- geographies’ (Berlant and Warner ernist rigid taxidermic taxonomies 2005, 198). In this sense failure and and to re-think queer embodiment the disturbance of heteronormative and social relations. Drawing on teleologies are always inscribed in the work of Donna Haraway she Review: Szczygielska 237 invests in monstrous cyborg uni- forgetfulness as queer strategies ties, and in this way manages to that help to reveal false narratives add ‘queer’ to the Marxist dictionary of heteronormative continuity and (Haraway 1996). In the children’s succession. By using the counter- animation Chicken Run Halbers- example of loopy idiocy in Dude, tam traces Gramscian structures Where’s My Car? Halberstam paints of counterhegemony and Hardt’s a startlingly accurate analysis of the and Negri’s praise of collectivity and messy relationships between amne- technologically enhanced multitude sia, stupidity, masculinity, whiteness (Hardt and Negri 2005). Paradoxi- and temporality. Later she points out cally the rebellious feminist poten- that stupidity and forgetfulness are tial of this animation has already deeply gendered ways of knowing. been acknowledged and taken very While ‘Dudes’ exemplifies male stu- seriously by the Iranian political re- pidity, an amnesiac fish named Dory gime – the documentary Traces of from Finding Nemo represents a fe- Zionism in World Cinema from 2008 male model of queer time, knowl- focuses on Chicken Run as a west- edge, kinship and cooperation. ern tool for smuggling revolutionary In chapter three Halberstam elo- propaganda (IRINN TV). Indeed, quently challenges queer theory’s Halberstam would probably agree rejection of the child figure, criticized that what she calls the ‘Pixarvolt’ as the embodiment of ‘reproduc- genre in kids films is a highly politi- tive futurism’ (Edelman 2004), by cal enterprise, which by privileging recognizing childhood and childish- collective cooperation over selfish ness as queer experiences. Leav- individualism, diverse communities ing the Darwinian motto of winners over untrammeled consumption and aside, she focuses on the ‘not close social bonding over family kinships, enough’ losers of the Olympics pho- poses a threat to both authoritarian tographed by Tracy Moffat, the punk and neoliberal political regimes. Her junkies from Trainspotting, George analysis makes important connec- Brassaï’s social outcasts in 1930s tions between the elements of the Paris, and a butch lesbian from The animation/animality/animism triad. L Word. The failure of this last char- This allows us to imagine what tran- acter, according to Halberstam, le- scending borders between the hu- gitimizes the fabulous lesbian figure man and the nonhuman, reality and of this popular TV series that suc- imagination, life and non-life, ob- cessfully attracts a heteronorma- jects and subjects, might look like. tive gaze. She writes: ‘[d]yke anger, In the second chapter Halber- anticolonial despair, racial rage, stam continues to build the frame- counterhegemonic violence, punk work of failure as a way of life. pugilism—these are the bleak and This time she turns to stupidity and angry territories of the antisocial 238 GJSS Vol 9, Issue 2 turn; these are the jagged zones multigendered, and full of wild forms within which not only self- shattering of sociality’ (Halberstam 2011, 181) (the opposite of narcissism in a way) other-worldly becomings. but other-shattering occurs’ (Hal- I think that The Queer Art of berstam 2011, 110). Later in chap- Failure is an immensely valuable ter four she proposes that radical resource not only for those new passivity and masochism can form to queer theory, but also for stu- strategies for envisioning difference dents and scholars who are more in lesbian femininity. Refashioning invested in the field. I was pleased victimhood that is beloved by liberal to discover that Halberstam has feminism (which is still invested in managed to create an alternative generational logic of passing down queer archive that is composed of knowledge), Halberstam stands for artists, outcasts, cartoon charac- ‘shadow feminisms’ that through ap- ters, and punks. However, her in- parent passivity and negation resist sightful critique of the gay male ar- the unchoosable choices posed by chive (preferred by queer theorists the capitalist imperative of striv- like Edelman and Bersani) as being ing for happy endings (Halberstam completely western- and male-cen- 2011, 4). tric, although present in her previ- In arguing for what she calls ‘pi- ous article (Halberstam 2008, 152), rate cultures’ Halberstam acknowl- was unfortunately not included in edges that pirates can actually this book. Nevertheless, The Queer be bloodthirsty bandits (Halbers- Art of Failure is a path-breaking tam 2011, 18). It becomes clear in radical project which, thanks to the chapter five where by uncovering engaging and lucid writing style, dark histories of the Nazi past she is an accessible read. Halberstam explores the troubling relationship has chosen a truly queer approach between homosexuality and fas- that does not follow a straight path; cism. This part of queer history is it takes unexpected detours, but at unwanted and unwelcome by the the same time does not shy away ‘pink triangle activism’, because it from troublesome and complicat- does not neatly fit into the narratives ed memories of queer pasts and of the persecution of gay people doesn’t try to please readers with a under the Nazi regime. For Halber- big bang fairy-tale moral in the end. stam it’s a pretext to raise questions Instead we are left with a deeply about the erotics of history and eth- political, anti-capitalist, fleshy proj- ics of complicity. In the last chapter ect that posits queerness within the she comes back to the animated framework of the wacky, hopelessly worlds of posthuman creatures that absurd art of failing spectacularly. often (but not always) offer a prom- ise of ‘antihumanist, antinormative, Review: Szczygielska 239

References IRINN TV. “MEMRI: Iranian TV Docu- Ahmed, Sara. 2006. Queer Phenom- mentary Series Traces Zion- enology: Orientations, Objects, ist Themes in Western Movies: Others. Durham: Duke University ‘Chicken Run’.” MEMRITV - The Press. Middle East Media Research In- stitute. http://www.memritv.org/ Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. clip/en/1787.htm. 2005. Sex in Public. In Michael Warner, ed. Public and Counter- public. New York: Zone Books.

Edelman, Lee. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke University Press Books.

Gaard, Greta. 1997. Toward a Queer Ecofeminism. Hypatia 12 (1): 114–37.

Giffney, Noreen, and Myra J. Hird. 2008. Queering the Non/human. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Halberstam, Judith. 2008. The Anti-So- cial Turn in Queer Studies. Gradu- ate Journal of Social Science 5 (2): 140-156.

———. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, London: Duke University Press.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 1996. Gen- der for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word. In Sarah Franklin, ed. The Sociol- ogy of Gender, Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar Pub- lishers.

Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2005. Multitude: War And Democ- racy In The Age Of Empire. Pen- guin Books.