Empty Spaces

Here’s a stupid and privileged thing I said last week:

“I don’t believe in the language of safety.”

I was out with colleagues and friends, and we were toasting the end of the Winter Term, and of grading, and of submitting the grades. Why was I on such a high horse? What did I mean by that? The answer to the first question is I was having a beer, and I’m a cheap, if usually cheerful drunk. The answer to the second is: many things. It was a thesis to a larger discussion I am not usually prone to launching into. Most importantly, though, I could only say it because of the safe space I was in.

What made that space safe? My colleagues and I have not known each other long, but we meet quite regularly, and have interesting conversations. What I mean by that is we talk about pedagogy, we discuss difficult or interesting teaching scenarios, we exchange wise advice born of our extensive and varied teaching experience. We help each other. We commiserate. We support each other. We were brought together by an institution which owes us nothing, and we try to navigate the requirements of one of the most emotionally-demanding jobs with dignity and ethics.

We don’t normally chit-chat about the weather.

We have come, in our few get-togethers, to share or understand each other’s assumptions.

That’s why it was safe for me to spew out a half-baked, out-of-context inanity.

Because I knew my friends would listen. Ask for clarification. Have patience for me to expound, no matter how long it took me to dust my soap box, step on it, unroll my screed, and pontificate.

Here’s what I meant by it: safety at all costs can sometimes preclude the possibility of intellectual debate. The qualification here is crucial, because we know so much more now about how trauma works, and how what to someone sounds like the height of intellectual debate can actively harm someone else, who had experienced trauma of any kind. Triggers are as ubiquitous as they are harmful.

I’m not writing to rehash the discussion of trigger warnings on course outlines here, but to try to understand how we can move into a post-cartesian space in which we understand that our emotional life moulds our intellectual one.

How do we discuss painful things in a public space without excluding or harming other people?

In a recent New York Times op-ed titled “Stop Saying ‘I feel like’,” Molly Worthen says:

This is what is most disturbing about “I feel like”: The phrase cripples our range of expression and flattens the complex role that emotions do play in our reasoning. It turns emotion into a cudgel that smashes the distinction — and even in our relativistic age, there remains a distinction — between evidence out in the world and internal sentiments known only to each of us.

I am cringing at the ableist language, as much as I appreciate the attempt to grapple with one of the dilemmas of our cultural moment. But what the casual ableism here shows is how easy it is to commit micro-aggressions as you stand on that soap-box, energized by the righteousness of your own cause.

A different way to frame the issue appeared in a conversation between Jeanette Winterson and Marlon James. The latter says:

But about Facebook. My students grew up in an era where they take partisanship for granted. They have never had to deal with an opposing view, or respecting it, because they grew up believing that, whether it’s liberal or conservative, an opposing view is something you make fun of. Whether it’s really, really brilliant, like Jon Stewart, or whether your aunt said something bad about Bill Clinton. They also grew up with 5,000 Facebook friends who all think exactly like them. They really think the universe is millions of people all on the same page. So when you inject conflict, even in a classroom, they have no idea what to do with it.

This is a different formulation, but my teaching experience is predicated on critical thinking, whereas James is talking about creative writing. The two elicit different pedagogies, even though I would argue you cannot do the latter without the former (and that’s what creative critique is all about). And that’s probably where the rub is: understanding that critical thinking is different than personal conflict.

I have no answers, but I do want to talk more about how we can openly and safely discuss ideas while also being respectful and inclusive. Otherwise, it’s so easy to re-affirm and reproduce the past. Oppression. Exploitation.

What do you think? How do we talk about heartfelt, potentially problematic issues in a way that moves the conversation in new directions without marginalizing or re-victimizing anyone?