The idea of ‘failure’ is confusing. The term defines a negative outcome, but here sometimes attempts to describe a positive, actively produced phenomenon. Can a work be about failure? If an attempt at failure falls short, is it rather a success?
The discussion of Failure is full of problems and paradoxes. After all, how does one actively seek failure? The proposition itself is illogical and its completion immeasurable. The most literal interpretation of ‘failure’ – describing an attempted action that proves unfruitful – is absolutely necessary, but it is also important to consider its other manifestations.
Our vocabulary of failure should expand to include words like ‘pathos’ (and its derivatives apathy and pathetic), sincerity, the abject and the anti-heroic. Failure is not often explicitly addressed, but more typically implied through the use of such signifiers: exhaustion, collapse, surrender and falling, impracticality, persistence or stubbornness. These terms refer to each other and deal with genres that overlap while remaining autonomous.
Our vision should include the recognition of failure beyond the literal definition and closer sometimes to a sort of occupation of failure. Consider also, the original anti-heroes of Greek tragedies, Caesar’s Brutus, Sisyphus, Icarus, et al. whose best intentions ended in great cost and suffering.
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