Abstract

This article critiques Jack Halberstam's concept of queer failure through a feminist cripistemological lens. Challenging Halberstam's interpretation of Erika Kohut in The Piano Teacher as a symbol of postcolonial angst rather than a figure of psychosocial disability, the article establishes a critical coalition between crip feminist theory and queer-of-color theory to promote a materialist politics and literal-minded reading practice designed to recognize minority subjectivities rather than exploiting them for their metaphorical resonance. In asserting that Erika Kohut is better understood as a woman with borderline personality disorder , and in proposing borderline personality disorder as a critical optic through which to read both The Piano Teacher and The Queer Art of Failure , the article challenges the usual cultural undermining of epistemic authority that comes with the BPD diagnosis. It asserts instead that BPD might be a location of more, rather than less, critical acumen about the negative affects that accompany queer failures, and reflect on what we might call a borderline turn in queer theory. On a broader level, the article joins an emergent conversation in crip theory about the reluctance of queer theory to address disability in meaningful and substantive ways