Marshall W. Alcorn

Guest editors’ introduction to special section on cultural shifts in pedagogy: Controversy, safe spaces, and trigger warnings

Widespread concerns regarding classroom safe spaces and trigger warnings have generated much media attention. This collection of materials from an APCS conference workshop on the topic reflects an attempt by scholars in the clinical community to understand and manage the often affectively charged divisions that are generated by such discussions. Our experience suggests that significant additional time is needed to work though conflicts while social bonds are maintained, even in the presence of emotional pain. Even for experienced clinicians, this material suggests, the containment of divisive encounters remains a challenge.

On process and traumatic repetition

The moderators reflect on the structure and dynamics of the conference panel, the disrupted effort to talk “about” trigger warnings, and the re-enactment of social problematics that left the group with open wounds. They ask what derailed the dialogue, and consider the effects of the panelists’ race and gender.

Coda: On pain and dialogue

In ending this panel the co-editors reflect upon the in vivo process that occurred in the group, and upon the process of this publication dialogue. This ongoing post mortem allowed the co-editors to shift from shame and anxiety towards a much more reflective, remorseful attitude which held the multiplicity of identity and subjectivity.

Affect and Intention in Rhetoric and Poetics

Contemporary affect theory has challenged traditional assumptions about human reason. Since Plato, Western culture has seen human behavior according to a sharp Reason/Emotion binary. Reason promises a pure efficacy to determine action. Affect, in contrast, disables reason’s competence. Challenges to Plato’s binary argue that reason is not primary, in human action and thought, but secondary. Affective systems operating usually below consciousness determine in advance what comes to be claimed as “reason.” Aristotle’s attention to this question led him to develop, in place of a Reason/Emotion binary, a “phantasia/belief” alternative, one in which affect plays a role in phantasia , or the “animal, ” “emotion” side of the dyad, governed by affectively attuned non-linguistic cognition, and also a role on the “reason,” “belief,” or “human” side, where linguistically mediated beliefs shape human cognition. Reason and emotion, rather than being separate, overlap on Aristotle’s account. Moreover, his understanding of this overlap can be seen in his analysis of narrative production in the Poetics and in his account of persuasive discourse in the Rhetoric .