ABSTRACT
This chapter works to unravel what is happening between these discourses of failure and success, through looking to the history of colonisation and European occupation in Australia and how this is connected to the global flow of ideas about Indigeneity and Empire. Success requires moving forward and overcoming failures, putting them behind us. The chapter focuses on the educational impetus of the colonial project in Australia as influenced by a transnational eugenics movement. It examines the implications of such colonial pedagogical practices on issues of success and failure in the present. The chapter explores the ways in which the historical construction of success and failure, based on concepts of race, has contributed to practices of silencing and political debates of pride and shame. Finally, it focuses on concepts from Homi Bhabha and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. The chapter outlines a theoretical orientation that aims to support educational research practices to identify the violence of success and the relief of failure.
