Queer experience is often characterized as a failure to conform to norms and expectations. In this talk, we will ask the question: What is failure? Can we think beyond the success/failure opposition? This will also be the occasion to reflect on “queer theory”, and on its relationship to its own success and failure as a discipline. What are the borders, the objects, and the territories of “queer theory”? Does “queer theory” fail at providing these requirements attached to disciplinarity? Can “queer theory” succeed beyond failure?
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Thomas Clément Mercier is currently a Postodctoral Research Fellow at CEFRES/ Charles University (Prague). His work has been published in journals such as Global Discourse, Oxford Literary Review, Derrida Today, Revue ITER, and Parallax. He specializes in 20th century philosophy, political thought and international studies, with a particular interest in the multi-layered problematics of democracy, violence and political resistance from the perspectives of deconstruction, Marxism, queer and decolonial thought.