Failure

Arjun Appadurai is Paulette Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.Neta Alexander is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media at Colgate University, New York.

"Failure is an extraordinarily incisive and insightful work of contemporary social theory. The book unravels an infuriating paradox: Silicon Valley and Wall Street companies that move fast, break things, and ruin lives, justify their disastrous performance as a necessary step toward a glorious future. Appadurai and Alexander debunk this naïve narrative of progress, while exposing how important it is to superficially respectable social science. Their critical theory illuminates key trends of our time."Frank Pasquale, University of Maryland Carey School of Law“Appadurai and Alexander’s Failure exacts a scathing critique of how digital capitalism reorganizes time, the social, and the self. It is a stockpile of insights, an academic arsenal for overthrowing today’s ‘regimes of failure.’”John Cheney-Lippold, University of Michigan“Failure is an exercise in interdisciplinarity rendered particularly effective in its ability to touch on concepts currently on the radar of popular audiences, from questions of digital privacy to the ramifications of the financializing futures. Failure’s call to action is a reminder to remember certain failures and their effects, but its reach extends beyond readjusting day-to-day priorities—Failure is a guide for reexamining the local and global systems threatening to indefinitely divide those of us with so much in common.”Hyperrhiz 22

• Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: The Difference that Doesn’t Make a Difference 2. Chapter 1: The Promise Machine: Between “Techno-failure” and Market Failure 3. Chapter 2: Creative Destruction and the New Socialities 4. Chapter 3: Failure, Forgotten: On Buffering, Latency, and the Monetization of Waiting 5. Chapter 4: Too Big to Fail: Banks, Derivatives, and Market Collapse 6. Conclusion: Failure, Remembered 7. References