FAILURE: Reversing the Genealogies of Unsuccess, 16th-19th centuries

Project Information

REVFAIL

Grant agreement ID: 823998

DOI

10.3030/823998

Project closed

EC signature date 20 September 2018

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 31 October 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 1 416 800,00

EU contribution

€ 1 301 800,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE MADRID
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - REVFAIL (FAILURE: Reversing the Genealogies of Unsuccess, 16th-19th centuries)

Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2024-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Failure is almost everywhere, and unsuccess is deeply embedded into stereotypes about regions, nations, business, gender and race. Failure to embrace crucial philosophical ideas and scientific breakthroughs is often considered a key factor to explain differential paths of development. And historical, long-term narratives add an additional layer to notions of failure. Built in into accounts of the past, ideas on failure are naturalized and projected into the future. But while failure is conspicuously referred to in public debate, and in local and global politics, it nevertheless remains an obscure and elusive notion. How is it possible that a concept often used to relegate and marginalize individuals and whole communities is so ill defined? This project not only aims to solve this question but also to offer innovative perspectives that may enhance individuals and groups to debate and redress the intellectual constructions of failure and their real-life consequences.

The dynamics between inclusiveness and the failure to integrate is not only a key social problem of our present, but also one with deep historical and philosophical roots. Discourses on failure are present in many aspects of contemporary societies, and range from those regarding the individual entrepreneur, to programs to minimize the failure of regional economies at the expense of larger and more populated areas, and ideas on international leadership. But quantitative approaches to development and integration need to be supplemented with critical awareness of the consequences of attributing failure to groups, individuals or even nations (sometimes as a covered synonym in racist and Eurocentric discourse). Inclusiveness, and integration in all social institutions are challenges that demand reassessing the criteria used to identify failure. At the same time, it is necessary to promote a clear understanding of the temporary nature of failure and the possibilities of reversing and challenging it. These reversals are both a matter of fact and the result of changes in social conceptions of success, taste and well-being. While failure is a heavy and paralyzing category, a concept crafted to perpetuate colonial dominion and legitimize inequalities, positive psychology, engineering and philosophy among other disciplines have nevertheless pointed to several positive aspects and effects of failure and recovery. This project fosters broad reflection on the topic and to provide critical tools for schools, associations and community structures to analyse and revert self-imposed and external narratives of failure.

REVFAIL aims to analyse the different philosophical, anthropological and artistic values associated with failure and its long-term historical consequences. In addition to these scientific objectives the project has four additional civic and objectives:

—Offer resources and performative tools with which to contextualize, analyse and de-articulate social, ethnic, religious, racial and gendered discourses of failure.
—Foster the social inclusion of groups and individuals stigmatized as unsuccessful.
—Offer new means of dealing with differences in integration using innovative perspectives on life-time achievements and long-term, intergenerational goals.
—Reassess regional, national and social stereotypes linked to unsuccess and backwardness in Latin America and the Iberian Atlantic.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The network “REVFAIL. Failure: reversing genealogies of unsucess, 16th-19th centuries” has has hold six general meetings, each of which brought together around 50 researchers, and a number of guest researchers.

• Genealogies and philosophies of failure, Kick Off Meeting, June 2019, Lisbon, Portugal
• Failed lives. Rational choice, personal interests and individualized accounts of disaster, June 2020, Mar del Plata, Argentina
• Mid-Term Meeting: October 2020, Madrid, Spain
• Re-reading failure. Communities, gender, race and language in a historical perspective, January 2023, Oaxaca, Mexico
• The relativity of failure. Iberian empires in a glocal perspective, June 2023, Lima, Peru
• Fall and rise of empires. Reconsidering the failure of extended polities, January 2024, Madrid, Spain
• Positive failures. Reverting the genealogies of failure. Resilience, creative experiences and useful knowledge June 2024 Madrid Spain

Researchers from all the participant institutions have fulfilled over 258 secondments (c. 92% of the secondments that were initially planned). Alongside their research activities in archives, libraries and museums, seconded researches have participated in thematic workshops, seminars, doctoral programs and outreach activities in Chile, Argentina, Perú, Brazil, Mexico, U.S. Spain, France and Portugal. The network designed and published a webpage www.failure.es and a twitter/X account @FAILUREPROJECT! also informs on the regular activities of the different members of the network. Members have also participated in numerous radio and journal interviews, and curated exhibitions and performances on the subject of failure

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

A significant breakthrough in the previous state of the art has been made in the systematic understanding of failure. Together with this major advance towards a more complete and complex understanding of failure, the REVFAIL network has highlighted a number of contradictory attributions of failure in individual biographies and communitarian experiences of early modernity.

Systematic analysis of failure has been carried out by researchers involved in WP1, combining a philosophical approach with strong research into the history of the concept and its semantic field. Collaboration between cultural historians and historians of science, literary critics, art historians and philosophers specialized in different areas (from ethics to logics to ontology and) has proved particularly fruitful to understand the long-term evolution, and particularities of failure. The main results in this area are a Glossary of failure, which includes an introduction on “Failure and modernities” and historical-conceptual entries on bankruptcy, fall, guilt, decline, defeat, disaster, disillusion, debt, error, exile, stain, monster, wreck, oblivion, loss, poverty, ruin and suicide. Several peer-reviewed articles have produced a systematic view on failure. A second fruitful area of research are case studies that help to nuance, and even to counter, pre-existing views on the failure of individuals. These case studies have shown different strategies to revert unsuccess. More importantly, researchers have shown the changing viewpoint from which both contemporaries and historians usually label failure.

The results of the project include five books, all of which are (or will be) available in open access:

1. Glosario del Fracaso
2. Vidas Fallidas
3. Relecturas del fracaso
4. Fall and decline of empires (In press)
5. The relativity of failure. Viceroyalty of Peru 16th-18th centuries (In press)

Special issues at academic journals:
1. Revista de occidente
2. Magallánica
3.Transhumante

Logotype of REVFAIL project