Scheitern. Eine diskursanalytische Untersuchung kunstpädagogischer Narrative zu Prozessen praktischen Arbeitens

This study examines art education texts that engage with aesthetic or artistic-practical work processes and reference the term of “failure”. Using discourse analysis, it explores how the notion of failure has gradually become established in the German-speaking art education discourse from the 1980s to 2022, and identifies the discursive traditions that have contributed to this development. Through an analysis of the narratives, the study reveals the underlying conceptions of practical creative processes, of failure, and of artistic competence. The findings are contextualized within a broader societal framework through analyses informed by theories of subjectivation and governmentality, as well as through a reflexive consideration of “doing difference”. This work positions itself as foundational research and contributes to the theoretical grounding of art educational engagement with failure by systematically uncovering and critically evaluating the associated ideas, expectations, and implications in terms of their societal significance.