Teeger, Chana ORCID: 0000-0002-5046-8280
(2023)
(Not) feeling the past: boredom as a racialized emotion.
American Journal of Sociology, 129 (1).
1 - 40.
ISSN 0002-9602
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Text ((Not) Feeling the Past: Boredom as a Racialized Emotion)
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Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (532kB) |
Abstract
This article centers boredom as a racialized emotion by analyzing how it can come to characterize encounters with histories of racial oppression. Drawing on data collected in two racially diverse South African high schools, I document how and why students framed the history of apartheid as boring. To do so, I capitalize on the comparative interest shown in the Holocaust, which they studied the same year. Whereas the Holocaust was told as a psychosocial causal narrative, apartheid was presented primarily through lists of laws and events. A lack of causal narrative hindered students’ ability to carry the story into the present and created a sense of disengagement. Boredom muted discussions of the ongoing legacies of the past and functioned as an emotional defense of the status quo. I discuss the implications for literatures on racialized emotions, collective memory, and history education.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/ajs/current |
| Additional Information: | © 2023 The University of Chicago |
| Divisions: | Methodology |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races H Social Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 09 May 2023 09:54 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Dec 2024 00:48 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/118819 |
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