1st Edition
Failure Narratives Beyond Redemption Twentieth Century Literature and Film
Introduction: Failure and Its Never-lasting Effects, Chapter 1. Fail Worse: The Allure of Redemptive Failure, Chapter 2. Failure of Authorship: John Williams, Chapter 3. Failure of Progressive Politics: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Chapter 4. Failure of Revolutionary Aesthetics: Bruno Jasieński, Chapter 5. Restaging Failure, Conclusion: Putting Failure to Work?, Bibliography, Index
Biography
Krzysztof Rowiński is a literary comparatist working at Trinity College Dublin. He is the initiator and co-founder of the Fail Worse research network, devoted to rethinking academic approaches to failure across the humanities and social sciences.
"An important rejoinder to late capitalism's tendency to frame failure as means to success, Rowiński's incisive theoretical readings unveil the potential dwelling in the endless aftermath of cultural production that fails again and again."
- Daniel Sack, Professor, Department of English and Commonwealth Honors College, University of Massachusetts Amherst
"Rowiński’s account of non-redemption carefully works against the idea that failure can be productively overcome on the way to resolution. His detailed engagements with literature, film and performance neatly expose how non-redemptive failure shows up in the cultural realm, but his insights apply far beyond this domain. This book is necessary reading for anyone challenging the toxic positivity of our time."
- Debbie Lisle, Professor of International Relations, Queen’s University Belfast
"Beyond Redemption brings overdue and appropriately rigorous theoretical attention to how ‘failure’ operates non-redemptively, bridging numerous cultures, disciplines, languages, and media. Condemned to succeed in this monumental task, the book is assured to be a landmark in the rich and growing terrain of failure studies."
—Nicholas Johnson, Associate Professor of Drama, Trinity College Dublin
