Trauma, Trigger Warnings, and the Rhetoric of Sensitivity

Abstract

This article examines commonplaces in the debate over using trigger warnings in college classes with special attention given to the repudiation of “sensitivity.” Arguments against sensitivity have privileged appeals to academic freedom over course and classroom accessibility, but these values may engender conflicting and even contradictory obligations. A rhetorical theory of sensitivity can equip teachers and scholars of rhetoric to make more ethical decisions in the debate over trigger warnings and can lead the field toward a more “sensitive” rhetoric.

Keywords:

• accessibility
• rhetorical theory
• sensitivity
• trauma
• trigger warnings

Acknowledgments

For their readerly hospitality and critical commentary, thanks to Susan Jarratt and the anonymous reviewers and to Michael Faris, Ryan Skinnell, Kristen Moore, and especially Neil Simpkins. Thanks also to Renea Frey for permission to cite her argument from the MLA 2016 panel. Thanks to Erika Nuñez for her discerning ear and to all those who have had some advice to give on how to be more sensitive.

Notes

¹ Some of the more direct engagements with these questions in recent volumes of this journal include Ballif, who contends that a traumatic and radically singular event cannot ethically be appropriated to history and meaning; McCann, who charts the thorny relation between affect and mental health in the context of racial and class politics; Vivian, who examines the rhetorical form of witnessing and its untimely temporality; and Doxtader, who problematizes confession in the aftermath of trauma.

² My use of “affection” here follows Davis, who ties the action of affecting to the state of being affected, as in this passage from Inessential Solidarity: “If rhetorical practices work by managing to have an effect on others, then an always prior openness to the other’s affection is its first requirement: the ‘art’ of rhetoric can be effective only among affectable existents” (3).

³ For more on the relationship between academic freedom, teaching, and students, see Boland; Crowley, Composition in the University (ch. 10); and Reichman.

⁴ Note that “violent” often appears as a descriptor in definitions of the verb “shock,” as in Merriam-Webster’s “a sudden or violent mental or emotional disturbance” (“shock, n.3”) or in the OED’s “to come into violent contact,” and compare “to wound the feelings of” (“shock, v.2”).