Scheitern zwischen Stigma und Show

Many are calling for a 'positive failure culture' that does not treat failure as a taboo. Consequently, events are being organised for people to speak openly on stage about their failures and mistakes. This ethnographic study of these series of talks explores how failure is reproduced and transformed as a normative pattern and a cultural practice. Readers gain profound insights into a contemporary talk format, in which social values, postmodern imperatives and deviations from them are negotiated. Franziska Veit sheds light on the bodily, textual and emotional practices and the socio-cultural conditions under which the 'failed' and their emotions are made publicly visible through emotional and performative practices.