Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.CitesClass[14]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[15]

Details

Caselist.CitesClass[14]

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
1		-2017-05-10 19:25:48.733
	1	+2017-05-10 19:25:48.0

Caselist.CitesClass[15]

Cites

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,3 @@
	1	+====Their criticisms of safe spaces and student-led censorship position over-sensitive student as a threat to the supposed happiness and coziness of academic institutions. Critiques of offendability are a racialized, gendered, and sexual strategy to reclaim lost hegemony won by oppressed bodies====
	2	+Ahmed 15 (Sara Ahmed is formerly the director of a new Centre for Feminist Research (CFR) at Goldsmiths, Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, and a scholar that writes on the intersection of queer theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, and post-colonialism/ Ahmed, Sara. Article from her independent research blog: Against Students Posted on June 25, 2015. Web. //Accessed 2/16/17 GK)
	3	+The figure of the consuming student has something to say to other figures such as the censoring student. I now want to return to an earlier post "You are Oppressing Us." I referred to one letter that mobilised the figure of the censoring student (this letter has since been supplemented by yet more letters – one of which even equates alleged "no platforming" in the UK with various acts of extremism around the world). This letter speaks of how some have been stopped from speaking on campuses because they articulate viewpoints that are out of line with the views held by students (who are treated as remarkably consistent, as body or thing, and I am partly tracking what is achieved by this consistency). The figure of the censoring student exists in close relation to that of the consuming student: both work to create an impression that students have all the power to decide what is being taught as well as what is not being taught, what is being spoken about as well as what is not being spoken about; and that this power is at the expense not only of dons and departments, but also politicians, journalists and other public figures. Students: they keep coming up as having all the power. Really? Yes, really. I noted in my previous post how the letter relies on flimsy evidence because it is assembled around a desire for evidence. Indeed the instances of apparent censorship (translate: student protests) seemed to generate more discourse and discussion rather than preventing discourse or discussion. When students who protest against such-and-such speaker become censors, those who wrote and signed the letter become the ones who are silenced, whose freedoms are under threat. So much speech and writing is generated by those who claim they are silenced! But we can still ask: what is the figure of the censoring student doing. By hearing student critique as censorship the content of that critique is pushed aside. When you hear a challenge as an attempt at censorship you do not have to engage with the challenge. You do not even have to say anything of substance because you assume the challenge as without substance. In the first instance, critique and contestation ("they want the wrong courses!") is dismissed as consumerism; in the second instance, protest ("they don’t want the right people!") is dismissed as censorship. Sweep, sweep. Beep, beep. Error message. Another figure comes up, rather quickly, at this point: she is often lurking behind the censoring student. This is the over-sensitive student: the one who responds to events or potential events with hurt feelings. She also comes up as someone who stops things from happening. We can refer here to a number of recent pieces that I would read as a moral panic about moral panics. Many of these pieces refer to US college campuses specifically and are concerned with the introduction of safe spaces, and trigger warnings. The figure of the over-sensitive student is invested with power. The story goes: because students have become too sensitive, we cannot even talk about difficult issues in the classroom; because of their feelings we (critical academics) cannot address questions of power and violence, and so on. A typical example of this kind of rhetoric: "No one can rebut feelings, and so the only thing left to do is shut down the things that cause distress — no argument, no discussion, just hit the mute button and pretend eliminating discomfort is the same as effecting actual change." Or another: "while keeping college-level discussions ‘safe’ may feel good to the hypersensitive, it’s bad for them and for everyone else. People ought to go to college to sharpen their wits and broaden their field of vision." Here safety is about feeling good, or not feeling bad. We sense what is being feared: students will become warm with dull edges, not sharp enough in wit or wisdom. The moral panic around trigger warnings is a very good pedagogic tool: we learn from it. Trigger warnings are assumed as being about being safe or warm or cuddled. I would describe trigger warnings as a partial and necessarily inadequate measure to enable some people to stay in the room so that "difficult issues" can be discussed. The assumption that trigger warnings are themselves about safe spaces is a working assumption (by this I mean: it is achieving something). Indeed what I have said is rather misleading because the assumption that safe spaces are themselves about deflecting attention from difficult issues is another working assumption. Safe spaces are another technique for dealing with the consequences of histories that are not over (a response to a history that is not over is necessarily inadequate because that history is not over). The aim is to enable conversations about difficult issues to happen: so often those conversations do not happen because the difficulties people wish to talk about end up being re-enacted within spaces, which is how they are not talked about. For example conversations about racism are very hard to have when white people become defensive about racism: those conversations end up being about those defences rather than about racism. We have safe spaces so we can talk about racism not so we can avoid talking about racism! The very techniques introduced to enable the opening up of conversations can be used as evidence of the closing down of conversations. Anyone with a background in Women’s Studies will be familiar with this: how we come up against stereotypes of feminists spaces as soft, cosy, easy, which are the exact same sexist stereotypes that make Women’s Studies necessary as a feminist space. The very perception of some spaces as being too soft might even be related to the harshness of the worlds we are organising to challenge. The idea that students have become a problem because they are too sensitive relates to a wider public discourse that renders offendability as such a form of moral weakness (and as being what restricts "our" freedom of speech). Much contemporary racism works by positioning the others as too easily offendable, which is how some come to assert their right to occupy space by being offensive. And yes: so much gets "swept away," by the charge of being too sensitive. A recent example would be how protests against the Human Zoo in the Barbican, about how racism is disguised as art or education, are swept up as a symptom of being "over-sensitive. According to this discourse, anti-racists end up censoring even themselves because they are "thin skinned." So much violence is justified and repeated by how those who refuse to participate in violence are judged. We need to make a translation. The idea that being over-sensitive is what stops us from addressing difficult issues can be translated as: we can’t be racist because you are too sensitive to racism. Well then: we need to be too sensitive if we are to challenge what is not being addressed. We might still need to ask: what is meant by addressing difficult issues? It is worth me noting that I have been met with considerable resistance from critical academics when trying to discuss issues of racism, power and sexism on campus. Some academics seem comfortable talking about these issues when they are safely designated as residing over there. Is this "there" what allows "difficult issues" not to be addressed here? In fact, it seems to me that it is often students who are leading discussions of "difficult issues" on campus. But when students lead these discussions they are then dismissed as behaving as consumers or as being censoring. How quickly another figure comes up, when one figure is exposed as fantasy. If not over-sensitive, then censoring; if not censoring, then consuming. And so on, and so forth.

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2017-05-10 19:25:49.85

Judge

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+x

Opponent

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+x

ParentRound

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+11

Round

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+4

Team

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Lake Travis Ehresman Neg

Title

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+JANFEB - Feminist Killjoy K - Safe Space Link

Tournament

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Harvard