UNMASKING THE FRAGILITY OF TRIGGER WARNINGS, SAFE SPACES, AND CODE-SWITCHING ON CAMPUS

摘要

In this essay, Myron Jackson offers a critique of trigger warnings, safe spaces, and code-switching that is based on two grounds. First, these practices derive from ideals of assimilation and appropriation, and are therefore wedded to a logic of domination. Second, these practices promote fragility. Increased reliance on trigger warnings, safe spaces, and code-switching is, Jackson contends, a biopolitical reflexive response of bodies under erasure in racialized spaces. In place of these practices, he proposes fostering an ideal of open selfhood (rather than fragility) that derives from techniques of cultural adoption (rather than assimilation or appropriation). He then locates these practices within a vision of democratic education.