Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book describes the iterative failure of the camp as the focus of an impasse that is to be interrogated through a number of hypotheses. It indicates a novel 'aesthetic regime of art' that 'articulates the dissolution of meaning and sense into insensate states of being. The book argues that 'failure with anaesthesis implies the exhaustion – the progressive disintegration – of the borderline between winning and losing, elegance and unsightliness, feeling and not feeling. It explores the aesthetic and political premise of 'beyond failure' by examining the speculative dimension of theatre within modernism. Theatre's constant experimentation and endless commitment to innovation with form and content creates new relations between performing, spectating, and presenting that posit theatre as a mediating space characterised by struggle, anxiety, and ultimately failure. '.