On Trigger Warnings, Landmines and Memory
Everyone's talking about trigger warnings in college classrooms this week. This has me thinking about how we navigate "triggers" in our daily lives. It also makes me reflect on the utter unpredictability of things -- stories, images, sounds, events -- that trigger painful and traumatic memories. This week, we've had some insight into how those operate in places where people have experienced and lived through violent conflict. The trigger warning issue occupies prime real estate in contemporary culture wars. Of course it does. After all, it is highly emotive, intensely polarized and wide open for criticism on either side of the debate. Plus, it involves feminists, who always get mocked for taking things too seriously and who never take that bullshit quietly. If you haven't been following the debate, college students across the nation are saying that they want to know which class sessions and readings/assignments will contain content or address is