1 Politics, Sociology, and the “Inevitability” of Failure Keith Jacobs and Jeff Malpas Introduction Contemporary society places considerable importance on achieving “success” and the capacity to accomplish. A corollary of emphasising success and accomplishment is that “failure” is usually judged as, at best, a productive stage from which one can learn in order then to become “successful.” Failure, on this commonplace account, is defined in relation to success, both as its privation (failure is a form of lack or inadequacy), but also as an instrument (failure is the means to success). Such a conception of failure is itself predicated on the idea that success is always possible. Failure is a temporary baulking of the attempt at control, but only temporary, and thus control, like success, is also assumed always to be a possibility. This way of viewing failure not only treats the occurrence of failure as productive, as a path to success, but it also takes the language of failure to be situated within a discourse of success as well – failure becomes a concept used normatively and rhetorically to encourage actors to greater effort, and to focus their attention on the possibility of success and control (which also means effectively directing them away from the limits that may undermine such a possibility). In both senses, as occurrence and as concept, failure is indeed treated as secondary to success and as instrumental to its achievement. Might there be a different way to view failure – one that does not treat failure as secondary or as instrumental – and that is therefore not predicated on the idea of the ever-present possibility of control? This chapter explores such an alternative possibility, aiming to offer a view of human failure in a way that no longer treats it as a lack or privation, nor as something that must, and can, be overcome as the means to success. Instead (and in keeping with the analysis developed in Malpas and Wickham 1995; 1998), we frame failure as an inevitable dimension of human action, and so as a condition for politics itself, as well as for the possibility of inquiry, including sociological inquiry. Extending the framework, we also consider the implications of such a view for politics, for inquiry, and for life.