Cultural Power and the Politics of Trigger Warnings

• In Event: 454 - Regular Session. Political Culture 2

Abstract

We consider here a recurrent issue in contemporary political culture, debates about hurtful or demeaning speech, and explore in particular recent controversies about “trigger warnings” for potentially difficult materials assigned in college classes. We argue that theories of cultural power improve our understanding of these public issues and policy debates, and that analysis of these debates can refine theories of cultural power. Beginning with an outline and assessment of Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence, we go on to analyze arguments for and against “trigger warnings” as responses to the “symbolic violence” of potential triggers. Parallel issues emerge in these theoretical and empirical sites of discussion about cultural power. We argue that these issues may be resolved by distinguishing discursive and performative power, and restricting the scope of the theory of symbolic violence to cases in which performative power augments discursive power. We conclude by sketching implications of this theoretical clarification for policies about trigger warnings.

Authors

• Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame

• Robert William Mowry, University of Notre Dame