Confession and Catharsis in the U.S. Academy: Trigger Warnings, Coalitions, and Academic Audiences

Abstract

During my decade at my selective liberal arts college, I have witnessed my institution’s embrace of diversity and inclusion as core values—or more precisely, a vision of diversity and inclusion reliant on a confessional-therapeutic framework anchored in neo-liberalism.  Whereas the confessional appeals to moral judgments about the good and the bad, the therapeutic appeals to professional judgments about the normal and the pathological.  Both models work together to conflate what we should do or not do with who we should be or should not be.  One clear manifestation of the confessional-therapeutic framework emerges in the trigger warning debate among feminist/queer academics and activists, which intensified during the summer of 2014.  By examining its typical arguments and themes, I argue that the debate's reliance on the confessional-therapeutic creates a series of zero sum games and reinforces a series of false dichotomies.  It thus fosters polarization and paralysis and makes coalition-building harder to image and enact.  In response, my essay proposes a re-conceptualized academic audience and attempts to call it into being.  It does so by proposing a critical vocabulary accessible to multiple constituencies within academia, especially those not typically taken into consideration.  My piece puts its critical vocabulary into action to illustrate how the stakes of the TW debate play out on the ground.  It ultimately strives to interrupt and disrupt neo-liberalism's ruthless, relentless focus on the autonomous individual.  I hope to provide a touchstone for bringing coalitions to life among social justice workers disparately located within higher education.