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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?

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Contents

Acknowledgments 9

Introduction: The Failed Individual 11
Susanne Hamscha, Katharina Motyl, and Regina Schober

I. Theoretical Perspectives on Failure

Sometimes You Just Fail: Protest and the Policing of Bad Feeling 31
Christopher Taylor

The Primordial Failure: A Cultural-Philosophical Analysis 53
Bina Nir

Failure in Economics: A Black-Box 73
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 Culture 119
Susanne Hamscha

Wohnkultur and Zombification: Trying to Unfail the Homeless Individual 139
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 Failure 189
Astrid M. Fellner

The Addict´s Ethics of Failure: Resistance to Ambition in the Photographic Work of Larry Clark 205
Florian Zappe

"Here is the trash heap, nothing there except a muted wailing?:
Dithering in Negativity and the Failure to Move on 223
Marius Henderson

Failure as an Ethical Choice: Academic Resistance against
Authoritarian Academic Systems 245
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 Failure 287
James Dorson

Productively Failing to Accelerate: Mary Borden´s Alternative
Vision of Existing Successfully in Modern America 305
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 Selfie 347
Geert Lovink

Failing by Design: Self-Tracking and the Failed Individual 357
James Dyer

Failure Blogs and the Confessional Self 375
Regina Schober

Contributors 393

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

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