Perversity, precarity, and anxiety: tracing a ‘more precise typology’ of the affect of neuroqueer failure in an in-school research-creation project

Abstract

In this paper, I draw from an in-school music research-creation project to consider the complex, racist-ableist politics of failure in the early childhood classroom. I theorise failure as it unfolds through anxiety, which I conceptualise as an affect of failure, to discuss both the perverse possibilities and perilous precarities of (neuro)queer failure. I examine two samples from an in-school research-creation project, which fail in generative yet risky ways: (1) a vocal improvisation by “Kwodwo,” whereupon I consider failure as mobilised through the racist-ableist politics of neurotypicality, disproportionality in special education, and refusal; and (2) research-creation’s transdisciplinary courting of failure through my “critical use” of electrodermal activity. Drawing from these two samples, I suggest that, in considering this special issue’s call for “bad research,” educational researchers must not only attend to those failures that sit within the successful confines of what is defensible in the academy (i.e. failure without failing), but also to the intersecting ethico-political complexity of failure.

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