The Cruel and Reparative Possibilities of Failure brings together a variety of scholars and research across disciplines, with an emphasis on communication and gender studies, to work toward reimagining the idea of failure. Contributors consider failure as both a space for growth and repair and as a space from which hope can emerge. The collection is divided into five parts, investigating failure as consumption; failure as media; failure as pedagogy; failure as narrative; and finally, failure as transformation. Contributors spanning the fields of communication, gender, sexuality, performance, and media studies each employ unique disciplinary approaches to failure in their explorations of topics including queer counterpublics, corporeal commodification, misinformation, abolitionist principles, abuse and consent culture, and everyday organizing, among others. Looking to the future, the book takes these perspectives and experiences a step further to explore the reparative possibilities that may be found in failure.
Jessica M. W. Kratzer is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northern Kentucky University. Desirée D. Rowe is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Towson University.
Chapter 1: Forced to disband: Counterpublic consummatory issues and queer failures Crystal StoneChapter 2: Implicating failure: Corporeal commodification in the organization of donor milkSarah E. JonesChapter 3: Embracing failure in Netflix’s BONDiNG: Misinformation about kink in season 1 addressed through character development in season 2 Jessica M. W. KratzerStacie Meihaus JankowskiDakota PannebeckerNick BlivenChapter 4: The paradoxical corrective failures of That 90s Show: Reboots and Contemporary Nostalgia in the Age of Streaming TelevisionMichaela D.E. MeyerSkyler M. Tolzien-OrrSavannah J. LambieChapter 5: Queer failures in the gender communication and sexual communication classroomMichaela FrischherzMichael Tristano Jr.Chapter 6: Failing toward abolition: Embracing abolitionist principles in the college classroomJennifer PotterElyshia AseltineChapter 7: Navigating failed systems: An autoethnographic account of documenting abuse and the call for trauma-informed approaches Megan Alyssa FletcherChapter 8: Triggered: Writing my way into consent cultureDanielle M. SternChapter 9: Performing abject: Reclaiming the body and resignifying the abject in performanceDesirée D. RoweChapter 10: The transformative power of failure in everyday organizing: Failure’s ironyAlana NicastroRachel E. SilvermanPatricia Geist-MartinPatty SotirinLaura L. EllingsonMelanie Bailey Mills