The Cultural Lives of Sensitivity Training

The corporate uptake of sensitivity training across the later twentieth century introduced a set of specific procedures for the management of affect in the workplace. Sensitivity training's formalized approach to affective regulation rendered it a key site of corporate reckoning with the effects of both economic deindustrialization and the worker protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The many depictions of sensitivity training in the TV sitcom thus provide an eloquent archive of popular narratives about race, gender, and feeling in the workplace. This essay analyzes representative episodes from Murphy Brown (1988–98, 2018 revival), The Office (2005–13), and Superstore (2015–present) to elucidate the narrative structures of sensitivity training on TV. Sensitivity training episodes frequently channel worker frustration with labor conditions toward a killjoy figure, a woman and/or minority character whose complaint cues the onerous corporate mechanisms of diversity management. Depictions of ineffective sensitivity training rebuke attempts at feminist and antiracist intervention into the workplace. At the same time, they stage fantasies of managerial failure that resist the increased demands for affective labor that accompany deindustrialization.