HALF ART
CHRIS THURMAN: Easy to be smug about trigger alerts when you’re not being shot at
SMUG purveyors and defenders of unexamined privilege — in SA and around the world — like to think they can prescribe the terminology used by their fellow citizens. They delight in scoffing at "political correctness gone mad".They have nothing but disdain for "trigger warnings" and accusations of "cultural appropriation" and the creation of "safe spaces". They think that people who invoke these terms when trying to express a sense of persecution, or injustice, are lazy and hypersensitive.Someone in my position could easily fall into this trap of smugness and indifference.As a literature teacher, I am tempted to affirm that if you study great writers you should be prepared for offence or even trauma — you should be willing to confront whatever demons from your past a text may summon, without the need for a trigger warning.But then I have never borne the brunt of racism or sexism or homophobia or religious bigotry. Mine has been a comfortable life; my triggers are the stuff of intellec...
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