Thinking beyond Failure.

FISHER, Tony; KATSOURAKI, Eve

Beyond Failure: New Essays on the Cultural History of Failure in Theatre and Performance, edited by Tony Fisher and Eve Katsouraki, offers a contribution to the growing literature in performance studies and performance philosophy on the aesthetic potential of failure in performance practice. Fisher and Katsouraki frame failure as both painful and generative, nihilistic and utopian. Defining failure as "the pedagogy of futility," the overarching question that the editors posit is, "What does thinking beyond failure mean, and how might that 'beyond' suggest a different kind of aesthetics, and perhaps a different politics of the aesthetic?" They respond to this question with the notion of "hopefulness as that which lies 'beyond failure' ... however attenuated it may be by tormented experience." The collection features chapters by Simon Bayly, Mischa Twitchin, Shanna Ketcham-Heap of Birds, Joe Parslow, Macelle Mahala, Kélina Gotman, Cormac Power, and the editors themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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