The Failed Individual

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?

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

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