I believe that the most accessible way to give you, dear readers, an idea of what you’ll find in this reading list is to roughly sketch out the introduction I gave at a workshop on success that I ran in Ennenda.

I told the participants:
“The topic success emerged when we started thinking about value, gender inequality, money, work–life balance, productive and reproductive labour, and, more broadly, the discourse inside architecture theory.

Coming from the care discourse, terms like failure have been incredibly hot and frequently used over the past few years – especially in Swiss institutions. And, as institutions tend to do – particularly those embedded in neoliberal structures – they often deploy blockbuster terms like care or sustainability in paradoxical ways. Failure is a prime example. How many tragic stories did I hear on panels throughout my studies, where yet another highly accomplished person, using a Greek tragedy narrative arc – with climax and suffering – shared their tale of failure, only to underline their ultimate success even more forcefully. The fact that our institutions continue to reproduce and reinforce the same dynamics through these formats is what led me to this topic: success. Most lecture series titled failure should actually have been called success.”

So now, in the frame of Beetroot on the Edge and Asparagus in the Pot, we’re hosting a successful midday workshop.

Before we began, I shared a short anecdote with the participants. I introduced it as the first story that came to mind when we settled on the word success:

“Now I will briefly quote a story someone recently told me, because it literally was the first connotation I had when thinking of success. It’s a story about Sigmund Freud. Freud was giving a lecture in Vienna on his major theories, and Leo Trotsky happened to be in the audience. At the end of the talk – after the applause – Trotsky raised his hand and asked Freud in a pointed tone: ‘But Sigmund, are you really trying to tell me that all of us are here because: A) we want to fuck you, or B) we want to kill you?’ The room went quiet. Freud didn’t respond immediately. According to the story, Trotsky then stood up, walked down to the podium, looked Freud in the eye, shook his hand, and said: ‘Well, congratulations, Sigmund!’ And then, apparently, the entire lecture hall burst into laughter – or tears – or something along those lines.” After this quote, Helen Thomas read excerpts from Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic, and that sparked the discussion you’ll find in our upcoming newsletter.