Trigger Warnings as Classroom Accommodation
Tuesday, March 15th, 2016 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesse_the_kAngela Carter challenges the academics dismissing trigger warnings as "pandering" to whiny students. Bringing teaching and trauma experience to the discussion she analyzes how trigger warnings accommodate traumatized people (in a dry, academic manner, but worth slogging through).
"Teaching with Trauma: Disability Pedagogy, Feminism, and the Trigger Warnings Debate"
Angela M Carter
Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 36, No 2 (2016): Winter 2016 | free open access
http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4652/3935
"Teaching with Trauma: Disability Pedagogy, Feminism, and the Trigger Warnings Debate"
Angela M Carter
Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 36, No 2 (2016): Winter 2016 | free open access
http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4652/3935
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In the most basic sense, accommodations are not about "safety," but about access to opportunity for a more livable life. When disability is denied because it is not understood or seen, or when access is denied because it is inconvenient or complicated, humanity is denied. While it is certainly possible to recognize trauma as a mental disability and still be hesitant toward trigger warnings as an accommodation practice, the content and tenor of that conversation would be far removed from the outright hostility and rejection that has reverberated most widely. When presented as an access measure, it becomes evident that trigger warnings do not provide a way to "opt out" of anything, nor do they offer protection from the realities of the world. Trigger warnings provide a way to "opt in" by lessening the power of the shock and the unexpectedness, and granting the traumatized individual agency to attend to the affect and effects of their trauma. Traumatized individuals know that trigger warnings will not save us. Such warnings simply allow us to do the work we need to do so that we can participate in the conversation or activity. They allow us to enter the conversation, just like automatic doors allow people who use wheelchairs to more easily enter a building.
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Date: 2016-03-16 08:16 pm (UTC)It's certainly thrilling to be in the room with some of my heroes, and there are definitely speakers whose work I'd never know about otherwise. Eli Claire is magnetic (I had the great luck to see him three times in a calendar year).
On the other hand, there's lots of swordfights-with-CVs as the academics establish dominance. Much much eyerolling and "all the cool kids sit together." First time (2000) I was struck at the lousy accommodations on offer; last time (2014) things were much better yet some holes.