Has the world become more triggering—or are people too sensitive these days? Over the past ten years, cultural controversy over trigger warnings has skyrocketed. Understandings of who trigger warnings are for, as well as what they may make possible, have become as ubiquitous as they are inconsistent in scholarly literature and popular discourses. Do trigger warnings help people to learn about that which is distressing, harmful, and injurious in ways that do not retraumatize—or do they foreclose the possibility of learning from histories and representations of violence, disaster, and injustice? Engaging scholarly, cross disciplinary, and popular sources, this panel explores the following questions: What are trigger warnings, how are they sensed, and what sensibility do they foster? What is the significance of the discursive shift which marks the growing acceptance of trauma discourse and trigger warnings discourse? How can we reconcile the history of trigger warnings as accommodations for people already aware of a trauma with the increasing perception of trigger warnings as a vehicle for avoiding awareness of trauma? What is the responsibility of institutions such as schools and post- secondary learning institutions in supporting mental health and/or minimizing harm to students living with trauma?

Elizabeth Davis (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University / Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto)
Trigger Warnings and the Trauma of Representation

To teach about social justice or provide an honest accounting of the violent histories out of which the present is born requires an encounter with violence as it is represented through curriculum. The student must be affected by such violence in order to learn (Todd, “Bringing More Than I Contain,” 2001). But what is the relationship between being affected and being harmed by representation? This paper argues that trigger warnings are a specific aspect of the modern discourse of trauma that has burgeoned over the past three decades (Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma, 2009; Pinchevsky “Screen Trauma” 2016). Specifically, trigger warnings form part of the discourse of trauma when representation is at stake (whether in media, news, novels, or other objects of curriculum). At stake in this discourse is how representations are seen to affect the sensible, sensitive, and sensory subject. Looking at examples of trigger warnings in media from epilepsy, to suicide, to pornography, this paper explores how the “harm” of representations is figured within trauma discourse and the significance of these figurations for ethical pedagogy.
Keywords: trauma, trigger warnings, pedagogy, media, representation

Polina Kukar, (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, Canada)

Does Education need Therapy? Thinking about the Philosophical and Practical Aspects of Access to Mental Health Supports in Ontario Public Schools

Does education need therapy? Thinking about the philosophical and practical aspects of access to mental health supports in Ontario public schools. In their 2006 book The Therapy of Education, Smeyers, Smith, and Standish trace the longstanding relationship between elements of therapy and the project of education. Spanning the history of Western philosophy in conversation with a variety of educational initiatives and interventions, Smeyers et al. repeatedly invite readers to reconsider the role of educators in relation to both therapeutic and educational ideals. This paper puts some of the major ideas in The Therapy of Education in conversation with the post-pandemic mental health landscape in Ontario public schools as reported by the non-profit educational research group People for Education. The pandemic thoroughly re-organized students’ sensory landscapes, with Ontario pandemic school closures acknowledged as some of the longest in the world (Gallagher-Mackay et al. 2022). As students have returned to physical schools, the impact on mental health has become apparent. How can educators think about the ways in which the pandemic may have affected students’ sensory and meaning-making experiences? How are educators to understand their role in relation to these shifts? Are Ontario schools to view student distress as a collective or individual trauma, new or long-standing? What is at stake? This paper explores both the philosophical and practical implications of such questions.
Keywords: Ontario schools, student mental health, therapy, trigger warnings

Megan Boler (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada)

Sensing the Public and Private Spheres: On the New Therapeutic Sensibility in Education

A seismic shift is underway, upending educational spaces with therapy-speak. From trigger warnings to safe spaces, discourses previously reserved for the private space of conversation with a therapist are now reshaping spaces traditionally conceptualized as public and collective. This new permeation of therapy-speak within educational spaces brings with it another seismic shift, as discourses normally reserved for the private and individual project of therapy enter the public and collective educational setting. This reality points to a major cultural shift: emotions, once considered "private", have now become "public" and "collective" in a significantly new way. However, whose emotions and sensory experiences are being centred and/or marginalized by terms such as “trigger warnings”, “discomfort”, and “safe spaces” in educational settings? This paper begins with a brief history of the feminist scholarship on emotions and affect that undergirds this shift (e.g., Campbell “Being Dismissed” 1994; Lorde Sister Outsider, 1984; Jaggar “Love and Knowledge” 1989). Then some tensions between individual and collective emotional experiences in educational settings are explored before finally examining ideas of “discomfort” (Boler, Feeling Power, 1999), “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” in turn.
Keywords: therapy, education, public/private, feminist theory, emotions