The Politics of Affect: Policing and Colonizing Anger in Disney’s Zootopia

Visiting Scholar Associate Professor Jennifer A. Sandlin from Arizona State University, will be giving a public lecture on Thursday June 29, 2017:

The Politics of Affect: Policing and Colonizing Anger in Disney’s Zootopia’

The is a free event and all Institute members are encouraged to attend.

Date: June 29
Time: 4 – 6pm
Location: 
VU at MetroWest, 138 Nicholson Street, Footscray 

The College of Arts and Education at Victoria University have sponsored Dr Sandlin’s visit. Professor Rob Strathdee, Dean of the College of Arts and Education at Victoria University will be a guest at the lecture.

Associate Professor Jennifer A. Sandlin  will also be presenting the Masterclass in Public Pedagogy for the Institute while she is in Australia.


The Politics of Affect: Policing and Colonizing Anger in Disney’s Zootopia
Associate Professor Jennifer A. Sandlin, Arizona State University

In this talk I focus on The Walt Disney Company’s recent hit animated film, Zootopia, which can be read as a commentary on the police state, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the policing of affect, particularly anger. I argue that Zootopia preserves and perpetuates whiteness, racialization, and dehumanization through the modulation and sanctioning of particular feelings. I problematize the film’s pathologization of rage not only because it disavows the productive and constructive uses to which anger and rage can be put, but also because it biologizes rage. Finally, I call for developing pedagogies attuned to affect in order to confront racialized state violence and the racializing assemblages that prop up ongoing white supremacist injustice, and argue that we must attend to how anger can be a form of moral protest and political outrage.

Date: June 29
Time: 4 – 6pm
VU at MetroWest, 138 Nicholson Street, Footscray