On Failure
VOL 4 ISSUE 1
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
3 december 2019
Welcome, new and returning readers, to our latest issue of Process, On Failure. In selecting failure as a submission theme, our editorial board sought work that lent fresh perspectives on a subject most of us would rather not dwell on. For all that we know we’re supposed to learn from failure, it is, after all, a miserable experience. Yet our board felt that thinking about failure is increasingly urgent. We are living the results of political, historical, and environmental failures that demand a reckoning; how might that manifest, we wondered, in undergraduate scholarship?
The work published in this issue avoids platitudes—no poster-ready “fail better!” or job-interview spin of failures-as-successes—and instead offers rigorous, clear-eyed analyses of political, social, and technological letdowns with very real and long-term consequences. Viola Burlew’s “In the Aftermath of Mendez: The Failure to Desegregate Mexican American Students in California Public Schools” examines the breakdown of an event that, at first glance, seems like a win. Mendez vs. Westminster, which predates the more famous Brown vs. Board case, resulted in a ruling that banned racial discrimination in California schools. Yet rather than treating the ruling as a climactic end, Burlew begins with this moment that ought to have been a civil rights victory. By treating the ruling as the starting point, Burlew reveals the decades-long disappointment that followed legal success and studies the legacy of persistent segregation in the California education system. In “Data and Distraction: The Policies of Species-Tracking,” Ginger Greene also begins with what could be a transformative success: the use of new species tracking technologies, which gather data on ecosystems and animal movement, to help the public understand and address the impacts of climate change. Greene meticulously explores the complex impacts of this technology, revealing the limits of technological solutions to ethical, political, and environmental problems. Greene’s essay dismantles the notion of neutral technology and makes the case for more collaboration between climate scientists and critical theorists to develop ethical and effective approaches to its use.
Our editorial board found these pieces compelling because they both take up the idea of failure in ways that advocate for the wide-reaching importance of confronting the events and innovations that go wrong. For Burlew and Greene, failures are not just things to move past, nor are they simply ‘learning experiences.’ The consequences of the failures Burlew and Greene study reach beyond single historical moments, academic fields, or political movements. They invite us to consider the ways that our failures reverberate across time and across disciplines.
We hope that readers enjoy this issue and are inspired to think further about the meaning and impacts of failure in our lives. We also invite readers to read the call for papers for our next issue, On Embodiment, and we look forward to seeing your submissions!
Sincerely,
Emily George & Kathleen Reeves
Editors-in-Chief
In the Aftermath of Mendez: The Failure to Desegregate Mexican-American Students in California Public Schools
Viola Burlew
Burlew addresses the failure of the California public school system to desegregate in the aftermath of the 1946 court case Mendez v. Westminster. While the Mendez trial ruled that schools could no longer discriminate against students on the basis of race, California schools continued to disenfranchise Mexican-American students and failed to provide an education that equitably matched their white peers. Burlew highlights the systemic policy failures that impacted the lives of Mexican-American students in California for decades following the Mendez decision. She argues that although the Mendez decision paved the way for future desegregation efforts nation-wide, its inability to alter the educational experience of Mexican-Americans perpetuated achievement gaps and inequities in California’s public schools which continue to persist today.
Data and Distraction: The Politics of Species-Tracking
Ginger Greene
Greene’s study explores the potential, and ultimate failures, of new species-tracking technologies which gather data on ecosystems and animal movements to help the public understand the devastating localized impacts of climate change. She argues that the impacts of this tracking technology reveal the limits of proposing technological solutions to address a complex problem like climate change, which is ultimately a social, ethical, and political problem. Greene’s work challenges the notion of neutral technology (with no environmental footprint) and calls for more intentional, environmentally-minded innovation and a spirit of collaboration between critical theorists and climate scientists to implement new eco-friendly technologies and climate change solutions.