Some general remarks on ‘failure’

Failures have been a common occurrence throughout the history of East–West encounters, as Ralf Hertel and Michael Keevak have pointed out. Q. S. Tong notes that failures are a ‘regular, essential and normal occurrence’. Still, con-temporary narratives often prefer to focus on success stories, and theoretical approaches to failure so far have been rather sparse. Tong observes that those who define an event as a failure in a normative way ‘have refused to accept the divergent, difference, and negative as constitutive of historical knowledge as a cultural other’. Indeed, failures in the sense of ‘falling short of expectations’ are especially frequent in cross-cultural encounters. But even though failures are a common occurrence and might even yield some positive outcomes, we should not disregard the fact that events lacking ‘success’ – however it might be defined – can and should be named ‘failures’ and that we may analyse them from the perspective of being a failure.

Although it seems to be a commonplace notion that failures during intercultural encounters may lead to better knowledge of the other and provide the potential to increase one's level of (self-)reflection, the parties involved might not recognise (or admit) the failure, or may even display the result as a success. Thus, the likelihood of making any progress by learning from failures is somewhat diminished. Generally, in any form of intercultural context, the encounter of different cultures can already be seen as a basic success, but due to various moral and cultural standards, the distinction between success and failure becomes blurry. In particular, the lack of interest of the English-speaking world to really ‘see’ the other has been particularly apparent since Lord Macartney's failed mission to China in 1793.

It is useful to classify different types or modes of failure. In order to do this, let us begin by taking a look at some basic definitions of the term ‘failure’. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary characterises a failure in two ways: first, as an ‘omission of occurrence or performance, […] failing to perform a duty or expected action […], [or to] perform a normal function’, and second, as a ‘lack of success’, for example ‘a failing in business’.