As Lisa Le Feuvre writes, “Failure, by definition, takes us beyond assumptions about what we think we know” and “the embrace of failure can become an act of bravery, of daring to go beyond normal practices and enter a realm of not- knowing” (13). Judith Halberstam explains that “as a practice, failure recognizes that alternatives are embedded already in the dominant and that power is never total or consistent” (88). This exploitation also offers clear resonance with disability studies theory. Halberstam argues that “while failure certainly comes accompanied by a host of negative affects, such as disappointment, disillusionment, and despair, it also provides the opportunity to” critique the belief that “suc-cess happens to good people and failure is just a consequence of a bad attitude rather than structural conditions” (3). She argues that “under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more coop-erative, more surprising ways of being in the world” (2– 3). Failure can reveal structural ableism and other forms of entrenched oppression while making space for other ways of knowing and learning.

— Academic Ableism by Jay T Dolmage (Page 184)