The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives—to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives. Jack Halberstam proposes “low theory” as a mode of thinking and writing that operates at many different levels at once. Low theory is derived from ec...

In this examination of the monster as cultural object, Judith Halberstam offers a rereading of the monstrous that revises our view of the Gothic. Moving from the nineteenth century and the works of Shelley, Stevenson, Stoker, and Wilde to contemporary horror film exemplified by such movies as Silence of the Lambs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Candyman, Skin Shows understands the Gothic as a versatile technology, a means of producing monsters that is cons...

In this quintessential work of queer theory, Jack Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two centuries. Demonstrating how female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contem...

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives—to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives. Halberstam proposes "low theory" as a mode of thinking and writing that operates at many different levels at once. Low theory is derived from eccentr...

In the last decade, public discussions of transgender issues have increased exponentially. However, with this increased visibility has come not just power, but regulation, both in favor of and against trans people. What was once regarded as an unusual or even unfortunate disorder has become an accepted articulation of gendered embodiment as well as a new site for political activism and political recognition. What happened in the last few decades to prompt such an extensive rethinking of ou...

In Wild Things Jack Halberstam offers an alternative history of sexuality by tracing the ways in which wildness has been associated with queerness and queer bodies throughout the twentieth century. Halberstam theorizes the wild as an unbounded and unpredictable space that offers sources of opposition to modernity's orderly impulses. Wildness illuminates the normative taxonomies of sexuality against which radical queer practice and politics operate. Throughout, Halberstam engages w...

Em tempos da prática do coaching e quando notícias distópicas tomam as manchetes, qual a importância de um livro sobre o fracasso? E mais: um livro que parte da pergunta do que poderia surgir depois da esperança, depois da terra arrasada? É com atraso de quase uma década que chega ao Brasil esse trabalho fundamental para os estudos queer e também a obra-prima do teórico norte-americano Jack Halberstam. "A arte queer do fracasso" investiga alternativas e rotas de fuga numa sociedade fascina...

Masculinity without men. In Female Masculinity Judith Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two hundred years. Providing the first full-length study on this subject, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances.Through detailed textual readings...

Nell’ultimo decennio le discussioni pubbliche sulle questioni transgender sono aumentate in modo esponenziale. Ciò che una volta era considerato un disturbo o addirittura una sfortuna è diventato un’articolazione accettata dell’embodiment di genere, nonché un nuovo spazio per l’attivismo e il riconoscimento politico. Eppure a una maggiore visibilità si è accompagnata anche una grande regolamentazione, che non sempre è andata a favore delle persone trans*.In che modo un’identità stig...

Che cos'è il selvaggio nel mondo e nel tempo che abitiamo? Esiste un'idea di selvaggio che non sia al servizio del pensiero coloniale, che non determini esclusione, binarismi, violenza? È possibile immaginare un pensiero selvaggio e selvatico, un modo diverso di conoscere? Paradiso perduto o inferno a venire, pensiamo al selvaggio come a qualcosa che è esistito prima, che potrebbe esistere dopo, in ogni caso qualcosa che è altro da noi: noi esseri umani, moderni, civilizzati, colti, sovran...

In the last decade, public discussions of transgender issues have increased exponentially.However, with this increased visibility has come not just power but regulation, both in favor of and against trans people. What was once regarded as an unusual, or even unfortunate, disorder has become an accepted articulation of gendered embodiment as well as a new site for political activism and political recognition.What happened in the last few decades to prompt su...

Ci avevano promesso che saremmo stati dei vincenti. Ci avevano indicato gli obiettivi- i soldi, la famiglia, il potere, l'eccellenza - e la strada, fatta di determinazione, sudore della fronte e pensiero positivo: se cadi rialzati, prova ancora e ancora; ci siamo rialzati e abbiamo visto che a cadere era il mondo intorno a noi. Mai come in questi anni è diventato chiaro che l'idea di successo che avevamo in mente è una condanna e che tra volere e potere c'è di mezzo il capitalismo, con tut...