The Privilege of Language, Trigger Warnings, & Some Controversies of Pedagogy

This paper explores debates around trigger warnings, examples of linguistic whitewashing in canonical texts, and Title IX controversies, as they contest the power of language to subvert hegemonies of convention. The ethical implications, for example, of the NewSouth Books 2011 edition of Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, sans the 219 instances of “the n-word” is paradigmatic of how such omissions have contributed to re-inscribing white assumptions of entitlement. From Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” to more contemporary instances of David Mamet’s “Oleanna” and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan’s debut novel, Sarong Party Girls, literature’s ability to dramatize and speak our more disturbing truths is what maintains its power to undermine the silencing apparatuses implicit in mainstream discourses. In bell hooks words, as she discusses the effort of coming to voice in black cultural studies, “Everywhere we go there is a pressure to silence our voices, to co-opt and undermine them.” This paper attempts to deconstruct some appropriations of efforts to voice exclusions as they overtly or covertly attempt to neutralize such challenges