- Sep 28, 2008
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A superb discussion about the new PC zeitgeist today, particularly on college campuses and among college age people
@invisible I'm not sure how you inferred all of that, but mostly what I got out of it was a guy reacting to no longer being able to run a simple lecture without fear of losing months of his life due to simple misunderstandings or poor word choice in the moment. I don't know his background but he seems genuine in his concern and desire to teach fairly. The conversation at hand doesn't really lend itself to "opening a discussion on apropriation" but I feel like he'd be down for it, I could be wrong. Maybe he would have been ok if he said icky instead of disgusting? Or as you mentioned just left out the example entirely, but people learn through association and story, and not everyone is flawless in this regard, myself included. I think about two weeks ago I used the word "disgusting" pretty improperly and upset somebody. Thank god nobody tweeted about it, I might be living in a trash can as we speak. Reasonable mistakes should have reasonable punishment.
People's lives, careers, families are being ruined via social media because of "micro aggressions" and this is not ok.
People say and do stupid shit all the time. Everyone does it but when somebody gets "caught" (usually out of context) suddenly they are the worst scum and everyone else pats themselves on the back for being so great by not getting caught this time.
This guy is no saint but he does seem like a reasonable human, whereas students have become increasingly unreasonable.
I'm not sure what it says about me that I intentionally seek out the kinds of things people want to censor or put trigger warnings on these days, lol.
Regardless of any of my personal experiences, I want to know when there's unpleasant stuff going on in the world. I want the nitty gritty, the dark, dirty details. I want to know, I want to be educated. It's incredibly difficult for me, for instance, to see someone suffering, but I would still rather know about it. What are you doing to yourself if you throw a blanket over everything you don't want to see, just because it's rough? That seems like a life half-lived and half-seen, to me.
From invisible
Re Washington Post article
I enjoyed the quote from Nolan, I think it is correct, these extreme responses (if genuine) require clinical treatment, not trigger warnings.
Although I thought it was pretty bizarre that a teacher would focus on the beauty of the language in a text taught in translation! to the exclusion of the subject matter, that isn't the point. The normal response is to move on from lousy teaching, not to burst into some emotional explosion.
I am feeling a great degree of astonishment that texts such as Achebe's are being considered to be damaging. I read one of his books for a class on postcolonial literatures. I thought the point of reading these wonderful books is that they show disturbing things. What else is the point of studying literature than to move towards greater understanding of humanity?
I was wanting to say that I think this has been in the works for a long time. There was a 2005 book I have seen called "Why are we reading Ovid's handbook on rape?" I think thinking about this question, it seems that these kinds of problems may have arisen from a very engaged and engaging educational process that truly interrogates texts and seeks their value... but has somehow gone awry. I think it would be excellent to be able to shift the focus back to engagement with the texts in this way... If it is "triggering" then why, and what is its value?
(I'm a big fan of Metamorphoses by the way, and the idea that it is a rape instruction guide is ludicrous to me.)