“Ren & Stimpy & The Queer Art of Failure: WGS at the End of the World”

Wednesday, March 25 |  5:30 – 6:45 PM
Cati Connell: “Ren & Stimpy & The Queer Art of Failure: WGS at the End of the World”
Location: WGS Sitting Room (704 Commonwealth Ave, Rm 102)

“We are all used to having our dreams crushed, our hopes smashed, our illusions shattered, but what comes after hope? … What is the alternative, in other words, to cynical resignation on the one hand and naive optimism on the other?” —Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure

The rising tide of global fascism over the past decade and the multiple population-threatening catastrophes incurred by its wake has left many of us feeling trapped in the dilemma described above. When the paltry but historically enduring failsafes built into concepts like democracy and diplomacy cease to stem the tide, what faith in survival can persist? Yet perhaps, in unmasking the lie of safety from failure that such systems of governance promise to prop up their legitimacy, new possibilities of liberation may become visible. Halberstam’s concept of the queer art of failure proffers a provocative “alternative vision of life, love, and labor” (2) that may help light the way. In this talk, I illustrate the principles of the queer art of failure using what Lauren Berlant calls the “counterpolitics of the silly object”—in this case, an episode of the early 1990s animated series, The Ren & Stimpy Show. Turning to silliness as a resource can feel woefully inadequate, insensitive, and inappropriately irreverent in a time of so much sorrow. Yet taking the silly seriously can also offer creative lessons in how to “work together, revel in difference, fight exploitation, decode ideology, and invest in resistance” (22) that often evade more serious and adult representations of sociality.