Affect and the force of counter stories: learning racial literacy through thinking and feeling

Abstract

This paper contributes to international scholarship on racial literacy in teacher education. Specifically, we consider filmic counter stories as bodies that carry an affective charge with the potential to ignite dialogic and embodied/emotional learning. The football documentary The Final Quarter is our case study. This film traces the racially explosive final years of First Nations Australian, Adam Goodes’ elite playing career. The film floodlights football as a site for public pedagogy where people learn racism, with the film offering means of developing racial literacy through examining its encounters. The paper describes racial literacy and establishes affect/ embodiment as a contribution to the field. We analyse the film using an affective-discursive lens and genealogical methodology and consider implications for teacher education. We argue that language is insufficient for understanding racism and that the affective intensities activated by film may help to pedagogically illuminate the role of emotions in reproducing racism.