The resilience of racism and affective numbness: cultivating an aesthetics of attention in education

ABSTRACT This paper suggests that cultivating an aesthetics of attention in education can be a valuable affective tool for combatting the kind of numbness often associated with the resilience of racism. The notion of attention broadens the frame of analysis of racial violence by taking into consideration the affective and aesthetic dimensions of attention. The paper brings together Taylor Rogers’ recent theorization of ‘affective numbness’ and Simone Weil’s theory of attention to argue that the cultivation of an aesthetics of attention to others’ personhood has a potentially pivotal role in education to restore hearing of non-dominantly-situated persons’ cry of injustice. The article suggests pedagogical ways of engaging teachers and students affectively to resist their numbness in the classroom. The analysis argues that ‘paying attention’ to racial violence can contribute to creating ‘reparative futures’ in education, but care is needed to avoid re-traumatizing students of color and other traumatized students.