Fail, Always by Irving Goh
My current interest in failure is partly motivated by what could be called failure studies—a growing archive of scholarship spanning the disciplines of philosophy, literature, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, science and technology, sociology, economics, and the digital humanities. Failure studies is doing the laudable work of highlighting failure as a mark of the contemporary human condition, of which we cannot defer understanding, critique, and even appreciation. Yet, many of the works in failure studies can also be rather hasty in giving failure a positive spin, followed typically by the conjuration of an optimistic horizon. Failure, for them, is but a (necessary) step to success, a critical lesson that will only lead to better things in the future or make one a better person. Put another way, it is through failure that many of these works imagine a life pedagogy for the recuperation or reparation of either the individual or the collective. In my view, it is this positive or optimistic outlook with regard to failure that most works of failure studies leave failure unthought in a rigorous sense. Thought has not stayed enough with failure. We do not dare dwell long enough with it. We are more inclined to get past it, overcome it, supplant it with something more uplifting or rejuvenating. Otherwise, in the presence of failure, we say that it’s okay, which, to the person directly experiencing that failure, bears little meaning since it is actually not or never okay.
I resist these moves. Instead, I want to take the plunge and tarry with failure, to delve into the state of failure. I will not even be concerned with whether things are going to sink or float. Failure is a state of flux, to say the least, or to follow the rubric of this special issue, I want to stay with this flux, without any hope of getting out of it. In this respect, things can, if not will, be depressing, bleak, or what one calls a downer. Indeed, I am interested in thinking about failure in its very key of depression and melancholia.
Failure is as old as time, which is also to say that there have been stories of failure since time immemorial. The story of failure can thus be as old as Adam and Eve’s failure to heed the commandment to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge, leading to the consequent failure to maintain their residency in the Garden of Eden. Or it can be as recent as the world’s failure to prevent, and then control and manage, the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the loss of millions of lives. But a personal favorite remains the story of failure that underlies or undercuts the Aztec myth concerning the gods Tecuciztecatl and Nanauatzin.
This myth begins with a world of darkness, and according to the gods a sacrifice had to be made for there to be light. Tecuciztecatl, with much bravado and without hesitation, offered himself. As if with foresight, the other gods asked if there was anyone else who could serve as a backup. No one dared volunteer, and so the gods turned to the nondescript Nanauatzin, who humbly accepted their command. After four days of penance, a sacrificial fire was built. Tecuciztecatl came with the most extravagant, exorbitant, and lavish objects, while Nanauatzin could only afford ordinary objects as humble as himself, including scabs on his skin. Another four nights of penance followed, after which it was time for the sacrifice. Tecuciztecatl was decked out with the most luxurious sacrificial outfit and accessories. Nanauatzin, meanwhile, was only given those made of paper. What remained to be done was for Tecuciztecatl to jump into the fire pit. Yet, standing before the fire, he saw the immense flames and began to feel the intense heat. Four times, he would take a step forward, but each time he would also take one step back. As the sacrificial rites dictated, none shall attempt more than four times. The gods thus told Nanauatzin to proceed, which he did without any drama. Upon witnessing Nanauatzin’s act, Tecuciztecatl also threw himself into the fire. According to the myth, an eagle followed Nanauatzin, and because it was burned, it came to take on black feathers that looked scorched. An ocelot trailed after Tecuciztecatl, which did not really burn but singed, thus taking on an appearance with black and white spots. Thereafter, Nanauatzin became the sun and rose from the east. His brightness captivated the gods so much so that it blinded them. Tecuciztecatl became the moon and did not shine as bright because of his hesitations during the sacrifice. Then the wind Quetzalcoatl swept over the gods and killed them, wrenching their hearts out and turning them into stars.
This myth is not primarily about failure; it is about sacrifice, one that results in a new cosmological order. This is well understood by Georges Bataille, who rearticulates sacrifice in terms of unproductive expenditure, which he would elaborate to involve a form of extravagant abandonment with almost reckless abandon—one that sees to the laying waste not only of valuable resources or objects but also animate lives. And as the myth instructs, such an abandonment is not a nihilistic gesture; there lies at the horizon the promise of something positive—a new world where there is light, for example, in the Aztec myth. For Bataille, this abandonment is always already occurring at the cosmic level—that is, in the sun’s expenditure of its energy through its rays disseminated out into space. This has never seen the depletion, exhaustion, or ruin of the world. On the contrary, it sustains the perpetuation of the world, including the existents that inhabit it. Unproductive expenditure at a less cosmic but more worldly level, as Bataille sees it, is also the necessary critical counterpoint to capitalist accumulation, which runs the risk of a catastrophic meltdown or explosion when excessive hoarding strains its capacity to hold everything together. But to return to the Aztec myth, Bataille clearly sees the figure of unproductive expenditure in Nanauatzin, the “accursed share” that is offered up for sacrifice, “to be consumed without profit” in the fire pit.
It is not surprising, then, that Nanauatzin receives significant attention from Bataille. Meanwhile, Tecuciztecatl seemingly slips away from Bataille’s attention as he recedes into relative silence for the rest of The Accursed Share. Yet I find Tecuciztecatl to be the more interesting figure, one that plays out the story of failure better than any other, not to mention that he seems more human-like in resembling us in his failings. We first see him in all his hubris, volunteering pompously to be the sacrificial victim—although without any sense of victimhood whatsoever—that would eventually bring light to the world. However, at the point when he is supposed to throw himself into the fire pit, he falters. Gone is his confidence in offering himself as the sacrificial object; he is no longer sure if he wants to assume or fulfill that role. His body fails him: he is petrified and unable to hurl himself into the sacrificial fire. His will betrays him, too. He is at a loss as to what to think, what to do next. He does eventually throw himself into the fire in his fifth attempt, except in the most fumbling manner and in a way void of the glory he was expecting when he first volunteered himself. Worse, his action counts for nothing, for Nanauatzin has by then already taken his place of the sacrificial offering. In other words, Tecuciztecatl has already failed the sacrificial order. By still throwing himself into the fire, he is only failing the sacrificial structure twice over since it is decreed that none shall try after four times. No longer in the order of sacrifice, Tecuciztectl’s hurling himself into the fire pit may be considered a failure to “die at the right time,” to borrow Nietzsche’s phrase.
The representation of Tecuciztecatl’s failure to die at the right time in the Aztec myth might come across as a little ridiculous, a little funny even, although one could already sense an unease subtending this humor. (I do not doubt that it will no longer be a laughing matter when the reality of Tecuciztecatl falling into the fire pit and burning becomes apparent). This failure, however, can be significant; it can have its own pathos. Many senses, emotions, or affects are coming together here, and not at all in any way that helps one to make sense of the situation. There is the sense of dying, the sense that it is that time to die, and the sense of having to do something to actualize this dying. At the same time, though, there is the conflicting sense of not knowing what is to be done, the sense of not wanting to die yet, hence the sense of not knowing how to proceed. This is perhaps where the sense of failure sinks in, where it becomes painfully punctuated (like a punctum, in Roland Barthes’s sense, with all the affects that can never be totally elucidated, represented, analyzed, or explicated like a studium), leaving one but with the pain of being, of still existing, while the right time to die has passed. The negative affects that accompany this sense of failure are also certainly non-negligible. Tecuciztecatl’s desperation to live up to expectations, if not to redeem himself, after failing at the first attempt, is rather palpable, and it endures, and even intensifies, throughout the remaining attempts. Then there is shame or embarrassment, too, since it has been made rather obvious by others (and himself) that he is thought most likely to succeed. This shame intensifies when it is followed by the sense of abandonment, as the other gods turn away from him and look toward Nanauatzin instead to complete the task. At the height of this desperation-shame-abjection confluence, all mixed with anguish and despair, reinforced by Tecuciztecatl’s failing to figure out what to do next after failing all four attempts, Tecuciztecatl is shattered and undone. He loses his hold on things. He flounders. He fumbles unconsciously, or even consciously, doing things that disrupt the general order of things. Not only has he himself messed up, but he also messes things up. He is, in short, a complete mess. (At the same time, perhaps one should not fail to sense a certain perverse glee in Tecuciztecatl while everything around him breaks down because of his failures, especially through his final leap. Is it not possible to hear a Bataillean burst of laughter here? In other words, is Tecuciztecatl’s failings not a move that extracts life away from the order of things, and hence what Bataille calls an “unproductive expenditure”?)
That is failure, the picture of failure, failure in almost all its senses with its negative affects. And there is no restitution. There is only the following through with the fall, falling with failure without ever knowing when or where the precipitation will end. No doubt, a new world order arises after the sacrifice, but this is not within Tecuciztecatl’s perspectival horizon. He would not know if this were still possible after he disrupted the sacrificial order by jumping into the fire pit on the prohibited fifth try. Any positive outcome or silver lining is for others to witness and never for those who truly fail or have failed. Furthermore, failure follows Tecuciztecatl even in his afterlife. Metamorphosized into the spotted ocelot, his spots are there as if to remind him of his failed existence. For Tecuciztecatl, failure is forever. There is no redemption. As I see it, it is critical to acknowledge such a sense of failure—one that can be never-ending and with which we have so far admittedly not dared to dwell. For a rigorous thinking of failure, it will thus be a matter of staying with such a sense of failure without trying to get out of it, and it is only then that we will take a step closer to thinking of failure as failure, to truly accept failure as it is, including all its negative affects.
References
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010.
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, vol. 1. Translated by Robert Hurley. Princeton, NJ: Zone Books, 1988. Col. 1, quotes from p. 97.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited and translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Classics, 1961.
Irving Goh is Associate Professor of Literature at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of The Reject: Community, Politics, and Religion after the Subject (Fordham UP), which won the MLA 23rd Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies; L'existence prépositionnelle (Galilée); and, with Jean-Luc Nancy, The Deconstruction of Sex (Duke UP). He was also a recipient of a National Humanities Center fellowship in 2022/23. His next monograph, Living on after Failure, is forthcoming with Duke UP.