Periodic Reporting for period 1 - REVFAIL (FAILURE: Reversing the Genealogies of Unsuccess, 16th-19th centuries)
Período documentado: 2019-05-01 hasta 2022-04-30
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.
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.
The network “REVFAIL. Failure: reversing genealogies of unsucess, 16th-19th centuries” has has hold two general meetings, each of which brought together around 50 researchers, and a number of guest researchers. The first meeting was held in June 2019 and hosted at the Universidade Nova of Lisbon. Its main objective was to conform a common research agenda. Four to six key questions for each work package were identified and discussed, and researchers agreed on a basic structure of problems that needed to be addressed in the activities of the network. Two examples of these questions are: What is the iconography and symbolism of failure? (WP1) or What are the most common mechanisms and practices for assigning success or failure to groups? (WP3). The second general meeting of the network was organized by Universidad Nacional Mar del Plata, Argentina, and celebrated on-line on June 2020. The main objective of this meeting was to put together finished and preliminary research on the topic of “Failed lives”, the core question of WP2.
44,5 secondments have been implemented during the first 18 months of the project. 37 additional secondments were delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Alongside their research activities in archives, libraries and museums, seconded researches have participated in thematic workshops, seminars, doctoral programmes and outreach activities in Chile, Argentina, Perú, Brazil, Madrid and Lisbon. The network designed and published a webpage www.failure.es and a twitter also informs on the regular activities of the different members of the network.
An on-line glossary on failure is published and can be accessed from the project’s website and an on-line book on Failed lives is currently under preparation. Finally, two research articles —addressing WP2 and WP4 questions respectively— have been published in peer-review journals and over 10 research articles have been submitted to international academic journals and are currently under review or in press. Four special issues at academic journals are also in progress.
44,5 secondments have been implemented during the first 18 months of the project. 37 additional secondments were delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Alongside their research activities in archives, libraries and museums, seconded researches have participated in thematic workshops, seminars, doctoral programmes and outreach activities in Chile, Argentina, Perú, Brazil, Madrid and Lisbon. The network designed and published a webpage www.failure.es and a twitter also informs on the regular activities of the different members of the network.
An on-line glossary on failure is published and can be accessed from the project’s website and an on-line book on Failed lives is currently under preparation. Finally, two research articles —addressing WP2 and WP4 questions respectively— have been published in peer-review journals and over 10 research articles have been submitted to international academic journals and are currently under review or in press. Four special issues at academic journals are also in progress.
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. Two peer-reviewed articles offering a systematic view on failure will contribute to disseminate the findings of WP1. A second fruitful area of research is related to WP2, where researchers have brought to light a solid series of 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.
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. Two peer-reviewed articles offering a systematic view on failure will contribute to disseminate the findings of WP1. A second fruitful area of research is related to WP2, where researchers have brought to light a solid series of 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.