Unlearning research methods: stories of attunement and failure

Several Political Science PhD students at the front nodded vigorously in agreement as Martin and the author slid off chairs in boredom. This chapter recounts an idiosyncratic, unruly and vaguely bonkers route through the research process as a way to honour the anarchy and rudeness that reigns at the back of the class. It encourages all of the reader to refuse the false promises of objectivity and certainty as the people collectively explore more creative modes of knowledge production. The problem with a productive account of failure is that it individualizes the experience to such an extent that the structural conditions of inequality, exploitation and oppression – the very conditions that often produce and exacerbate failure – are never held accountable. As the Lords of Silicon Valley had already realized in their ‘failure factories', failure was simply the newest weapon in the relentless drive to innovate more efficiently.