TONIGHT: JACK HALBERSTAM (author of "The Queer Art of Failure", Duke UP) IN CONVERSATION With: Jose Munoz, Lisa Duggan & Ann Pellegrini

[M. Hilaire]

The A/P/A and Gender and Sexuality Studies Programs in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU present:

 

JACK HALBERSTAM (Professor of English, University of Southern California)
author of The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011)

In Conversation With:

JOSE ESTEBAN MUNOZ (Performance Studies Dept, NYU)

LISA DUGGAN (Dept of SCA, NYU)

ANN PELLEGRINI (Performance Studies Dept, NYU)

Monday, March 26, 20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor, Dept of SCA, NYU, 6:30-8:30pm.

 

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 eccentric archives. It runs the risk of not being taken seriously. It entails a willingness to fail and to lose one’s way, to pursue difficult questions about complicity, and to find counterintuitive forms of resistance. Tacking back and forth between high theory and low theory, high culture and low culture, Halberstam looks for the unexpected and subversive in popular culture, avant-garde performance, and queer art. Failure sometimes offers more creative, cooperative, and surprising ways of being in the world, even as it forces us to face the dark side of life, love, and libido.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Performance Studies and is free and open to the public.