In literary and cultural studies, the politics of failure often seem opaque. Who or what counts as a failure, for which reasons this judgement is made and by whom it is made are rarely discussed openly. Instead, failure judgements mostly operate covertly at the interface of several regulatory patterns. The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure, for instance, appears to draw on a mixture of paradigms such as public recognition, peer appraisal and market profitability to draw up its list of alleged failures. What is missing is a reflection on the methods it uses or, indeed, the norms it applies. Focusing especially on gender norms and societal patterns, Jack Halberstam investigates how the underlying norms of failure judgements inculcate ideologies in readers and audiences, which also apply to other contexts. In The Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam maps how models of gender, sexual reproductivity and heteronormativity determine the underlying politics of failure and how they intersect with other trajectories, including capitalism, Western modernity and the cultural industry. For Halberstam, it is necessary to critically interrogate the ‘standards of passing and failing’ in literary and cultural studies as well as society at large in order to dismantle the ‘logics of success and failure with which we currently live’. Failure is linked to normative standards in culture as well as to economics and market profitability, as Halberstam explains:

The present chapter takes up Halberstam's argument about the necessity to think about the underlying logics of failure, in both its cultural and its material dimensions. It examines a set of paradigms that structure literary and cultural production and reception models, namely the relationship between failure, gender, genre, market conditions and the truth condition. As a case study that also highlights how interculturality plays into these intersectional paradigms, the essay turns to Anna Leonowens's The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870) and its transmedia adaptations, including its literary, film, stage and musical adaptations.

Cultural encounters between East Asia and Europe have received ample attention in various fields of studies, ranging from cultural and literary studies to history and economics. The concept of failure in these encounters, however, has not. Often, the story of encounters between Asia and the so-called West has been told as one of success, of cross-fertilisation, reciprocal stimulation and an exchange of commodities and knowledge. Yet, the history of East–West encounters is riddled with prominent examples of misunderstandings, ignorance, unrealistic expectations or unbridgeable cultural differences that, in certain contexts and for certain purposes, have been framed as failures. This volume opens up new perspectives on such instances by theorising failure in various historical and cultural contexts. Providing examples from different periods and disciplines, it contributes to current debates about the epistemologies of failure and shows how transcultural encounters are sites where personal and collective norms of failure and success are being shaped and challenged.

In its focus on failed encounters, Failures East and West: Cultural Encounters between East Asia and Europe goes beyond the hitherto dominant inter- and transculturality research, which is only beginning to dedicate itself systematically to the failure of cultural contacts. Focusing not so much on forms of successful exchange and the profitable circulation of ideas or knowledge, the contributions gathered here establish a new view of cultural encounters by demonstrating the subtle ways in which failure is staged, represented and charged with meaning, thus revealing the implicit mental horizons of the cultural players involved. While there is a growing interest in failure in other academic fields (e.g. sociology, psychology, visual arts, material culture and gender studies), what we would like to call failure studies is still in the process of establishing itself in the fields of literary and cultural studies. Failures East and West aims to contribute to this process and to open up approaches to cultural encounters in literary and cultural studies that probe the dimensions of failure as a culturally specific concept.

Failure in the context of international contacts is ubiquitous and contributes to a widespread sense of crisis today. Intercultural encounters in particular have become precarious, as is evident in debates on religious conflicts, migration and the integration of cultural minorities, as well as in the rise of isolationist positions that discard notions of multicultural societies.