Beyond that, however, and more disconcerting, is the emphasis here on the offensiveness of the “Western canon”. The term crops up three times in the Columbia Spectator article, a piece of writing no longer than this page, alongside other references to “Western society” and the “Western world”. For this isn’t just about student welfare. What begins as a cry for sensitivity in teaching difficult topics descends quickly into what is in fact a complaint about the dominance of Western thought. Trigger warnings are here revealed for what they really are: tools not merely for censoring febrile material for the few, but for redressing the balance of canonical literature.
Students are kicking back against what they perceive as “a set of universal, venerated, incontestable principles and texts that have founded Western society”. These are texts, they seem to say, which cannot speak to them, at least not without causing offence in the process. What is wanted is something to counterbalance the weight of tradition.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of the founding texts of Western literature, is an easy target. One student, they report, a survivor of sexual assault, felt “triggered” when studying Ovid’s descriptions of Daphne and Persephone, who are abducted by the gods Apollo and Hades respectively. In the case of the former, Apollo, stung by Cupid’s arrow, pursues the young Daphne because he wants to marry her. As she flees he prays she will not trip and harm herself. He is inspired by divine Love to grab her, but as he does so she changes into a laurel tree. Apollo ravages the tree.
Leaving aside the point that many Western texts have Indo-European roots, the kind of culturally and socially representative approach to literature that the Columbia students seem to desire could never address the problem of sensitivity. It’s not as though rape, war, and racism are any less endemic to life than they are to world literature. The canonical 18th-century Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, contains scenes of pillage. There are violent episodes in Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic not unlike Homer’s Odyssey. It is impossible to create a blanket warning to protect against every anxiety. Not that the problem lies with literature, or even, as the Columbia students seem to believe, with the methods of teaching it. It lies, rather, with the readiness with which some of these young people are imposing themselves upon the material they are given to study.
It is one of the great joys of reading to imagine yourself in another person’s shoes, but when doing so triggers intrusive thoughts the book needs to be read in a different way, rather than not read at all.
Snake Man required hypnosis and cognitive behavioural therapy to recover from his phobia. As part of his therapy, he was encouraged to confront his fear, which entailed reading about snakes and eventually touching one at a children’s petting zoo.
While the same approach would not work for all anxieties, there is something to be said for reading as a means of desensitisation. Given time, studying Ovid’s rape scenes in the context of a mythical world populated by gods and hybrid creatures could have a distancing rather than a triggering effect. What this wouldn’t do, however, is diminish the more damaging idea that rumbles beneath some requests for trigger warnings — the idea that it’s the Western canon, rather than its readers, that is out of touch.
Students are kicking back against what they perceive as “a set of universal, venerated, incontestable principles and texts that have founded Western society”. These are texts, they seem to say, which cannot speak to them, at least not without causing offence in the process. What is wanted is something to counterbalance the weight of tradition.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of the founding texts of Western literature, is an easy target. One student, they report, a survivor of sexual assault, felt “triggered” when studying Ovid’s descriptions of Daphne and Persephone, who are abducted by the gods Apollo and Hades respectively. In the case of the former, Apollo, stung by Cupid’s arrow, pursues the young Daphne because he wants to marry her. As she flees he prays she will not trip and harm herself. He is inspired by divine Love to grab her, but as he does so she changes into a laurel tree. Apollo ravages the tree.
Leaving aside the point that many Western texts have Indo-European roots, the kind of culturally and socially representative approach to literature that the Columbia students seem to desire could never address the problem of sensitivity. It’s not as though rape, war, and racism are any less endemic to life than they are to world literature. The canonical 18th-century Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, contains scenes of pillage. There are violent episodes in Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic not unlike Homer’s Odyssey. It is impossible to create a blanket warning to protect against every anxiety. Not that the problem lies with literature, or even, as the Columbia students seem to believe, with the methods of teaching it. It lies, rather, with the readiness with which some of these young people are imposing themselves upon the material they are given to study.
It is one of the great joys of reading to imagine yourself in another person’s shoes, but when doing so triggers intrusive thoughts the book needs to be read in a different way, rather than not read at all.
Snake Man required hypnosis and cognitive behavioural therapy to recover from his phobia. As part of his therapy, he was encouraged to confront his fear, which entailed reading about snakes and eventually touching one at a children’s petting zoo.
While the same approach would not work for all anxieties, there is something to be said for reading as a means of desensitisation. Given time, studying Ovid’s rape scenes in the context of a mythical world populated by gods and hybrid creatures could have a distancing rather than a triggering effect. What this wouldn’t do, however, is diminish the more damaging idea that rumbles beneath some requests for trigger warnings — the idea that it’s the Western canon, rather than its readers, that is out of touch.
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