Trigger Warning On Consent, Trauma, and Virtual Life in the Post-slavery University

Publication Title

Minnesota Review

Document Type

Article

Department or Program

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Publication Date

2024

Keywords

trigger warning, consent, trauma, higher education

Abstract

Trigger warnings, statements alerting readers, listeners, or viewers to the presence of content that might revive distressing memories, have become a flash point in recent discussions about the US academy. Providing a genealogy of the concept and practice in US colleges and universities, this article situates the trigger warning's growing cultural prominence within twined changes in computer-mediated communication and legal understandings of embodied consent. Seen against this backdrop of racialized, gendered struggles over the meanings of free, voluntary action, the trigger warning debate helps illuminate how the normative regimes of the contemporary university reflect the long afterlife of US racial slavery.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.1215/00265667-11047173

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