Valid emotions and Trigger warnings

Amongst the blog posts and classroom discussions I have noticed that Trigger warnings (TW) have become the opener to a number of issues. Most interestingly there has always been some form of discussion regarding censorship (most obviously), privilege, and validation of feelings. Amongst these topics a reoccurring topic in class discussions has been the way emotions (in this case negative emotions) are perceived as hindrance to learning and discussions. That an emotional response cannot be seen as forwarding our own intellectual development but instead as an obstacle for both the individual and those around them.

In their blog post Sara Ahmed openly claims that feminism was/is based in hurt feelings, in an emotional response to the injustice and inequality surrounding individuals. Similarly, as part of class discussion a few weeks ago, we were posed with the question: Do movements (e.g. Black Lives matter) need to be empowered by emotions? This question has plagued me throughout our course as we continue to encounter material that often creates emotional responses. Even within the context of our classroom, a space open to emotional and critical discussion of sexual assault, it is difficult to navigate between these lines. When is it appropriate to react emotionally in class?

In the video “What’s the deal with classroom Trigger warnings?” TW were depicted as discussion-openers not a form of censorship. But in Ahmed’s article it is not TW themselves that are the cause of censorship in classrooms but the emotions elicited. It is emotions which plague the objective rational University establishment. As has been said in class multiple times, TW openly question the knowledge, content, information we are taught as both natural and integral to a university education. Content that is graphic is seen to be a necessary component to higher learning. Yet this argument holds no weight for me. If professors and instructors do not openly acknowledge the graphic nature of the content they teach, how are they teaching students to destabilize naturalized notions of violence, racism, sexism etc?

Without repeating class discussion I think it is more productive to consider the TW debate from the perspective of emotions and which emotions are granted validity in the classroom. Ahemd points to the ways most individuals can be hurt and bring hurt into a room. It is this emotion that brings many to feminism, and I would argue to other forms of activism. TWs, in my mind, are not so much a debate on putting warning labels on content but on how individuals (in an academic setting at least) should be able to react objectively without emotion. That our education system relies on critical yet emotionless analysis is a large indicator of its faults. Therefore by reframing the debate I believe that TWs are helpful tools to create discussions which destabilize our notions of rationality without emotion as somehow proper.