Nov 8, 2015 09:48 PM
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/reading-...h-warning/
EXCERPT: At universities around the world, students are claiming that reading books can unsettle them to the point of becoming depressed, traumatised or even suicidal. Some contend that Virginia Woolf’s novel "Mrs Dalloway" (1925), in which a suicide has taken place, could trigger suicidal thoughts among those disposed to self-harm. Others insist that F Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsb" (1925), with its undercurrent of spousal violence, might trigger painful memories of domestic abuse. Even ancient classical texts, students have argued, can be dangerous: at Columbia University in New York, student activists demanded that a warning be attached to Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" on grounds that its ‘vivid depictions of rape’ might trigger a feeling of insecurity and vulnerability among some undergraduates.
This is probably the first time in history that young readers themselves are demanding protection from the disturbing content of their course texts, yet reading has been seen as a threat to mental health for thousands of years.
In accordance with the paternalistic ethos of ancient Greece, Socrates said that most people couldn’t handle written text on their own. He feared that for many – especially the uneducated – reading could trigger confusion and moral disorientation unless the reader was counselled by someone with wisdom.
[...] By the Middle Ages, the potentially harmful effects of text had become a recurrent theme in Christian demonology.
[...] The triggering of dysfunctional imitative behaviour constituted a particular risk to the virtue of women. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in his novel "Julie" (1761), warned that the moment a woman opens a novel – any novel – and ‘dares to read but one page’, she ‘is a fallen girl’.
[...] Novels were the focus of a moral panic in 18th century England, criticised for triggering both individual and collective forms of trauma and mental dysfunction. In the late 18th century the terms ‘reading epidemic’ and ‘reading mania’ served to both describe and condemn the spread of a perilous culture of unrestrained reading.
[...] One of the consequences of the emergence of a mass public of readers in the 19th century was the proliferation of warnings about the dangerous medical and moral consequences of popular literature. In 1851, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described ‘bad books’ as ‘intellectual poison’, for they ‘destroy the mind’ [...] It was the very popularity of these novels that disturbed Schopenhauer. He associated popularity with the lowering of cultural tastes, which in turn had toxic consequences on the mind.
[...] Despite being bombarded by the language of fear, the reading public cheerfully ignored the health warnings issued by their betters. Throughout most of the modern era, people bypassed the censor and demonstrated a willingness to embark on the journey into the unknown through their reading. Their open-minded approach towards reading was encouraged by humanist and radical cultural currents that affirmed the capacity of readers to benefit from engaging a whole range of texts.
[...] Meanwhile, in the 21st century, it is the reading public itself that seeks protection from the distressing health effects of reading. And therein lies the difference.
Today, it is not puritanical religious moralists but undergraduate students who demand that Ovid’s poem should come with a trigger warning. For the first time in their career, my academic colleagues report that some of their students are asking for the right to opt out of reading texts that they find personally offensive or traumatising. This self-diagnosis of vulnerability is unlike the traditional call for a moral quarantine from above. Once upon a time, paternalistic censors infantilised the reading public by insisting that reading literature constitutes a serious risk to its health. Now young readers infantilise themselves by insisting that they and their peers should be shielded from the harm caused by distressing texts....
EXCERPT: At universities around the world, students are claiming that reading books can unsettle them to the point of becoming depressed, traumatised or even suicidal. Some contend that Virginia Woolf’s novel "Mrs Dalloway" (1925), in which a suicide has taken place, could trigger suicidal thoughts among those disposed to self-harm. Others insist that F Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsb" (1925), with its undercurrent of spousal violence, might trigger painful memories of domestic abuse. Even ancient classical texts, students have argued, can be dangerous: at Columbia University in New York, student activists demanded that a warning be attached to Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" on grounds that its ‘vivid depictions of rape’ might trigger a feeling of insecurity and vulnerability among some undergraduates.
This is probably the first time in history that young readers themselves are demanding protection from the disturbing content of their course texts, yet reading has been seen as a threat to mental health for thousands of years.
In accordance with the paternalistic ethos of ancient Greece, Socrates said that most people couldn’t handle written text on their own. He feared that for many – especially the uneducated – reading could trigger confusion and moral disorientation unless the reader was counselled by someone with wisdom.
[...] By the Middle Ages, the potentially harmful effects of text had become a recurrent theme in Christian demonology.
[...] The triggering of dysfunctional imitative behaviour constituted a particular risk to the virtue of women. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in his novel "Julie" (1761), warned that the moment a woman opens a novel – any novel – and ‘dares to read but one page’, she ‘is a fallen girl’.
[...] Novels were the focus of a moral panic in 18th century England, criticised for triggering both individual and collective forms of trauma and mental dysfunction. In the late 18th century the terms ‘reading epidemic’ and ‘reading mania’ served to both describe and condemn the spread of a perilous culture of unrestrained reading.
[...] One of the consequences of the emergence of a mass public of readers in the 19th century was the proliferation of warnings about the dangerous medical and moral consequences of popular literature. In 1851, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described ‘bad books’ as ‘intellectual poison’, for they ‘destroy the mind’ [...] It was the very popularity of these novels that disturbed Schopenhauer. He associated popularity with the lowering of cultural tastes, which in turn had toxic consequences on the mind.
[...] Despite being bombarded by the language of fear, the reading public cheerfully ignored the health warnings issued by their betters. Throughout most of the modern era, people bypassed the censor and demonstrated a willingness to embark on the journey into the unknown through their reading. Their open-minded approach towards reading was encouraged by humanist and radical cultural currents that affirmed the capacity of readers to benefit from engaging a whole range of texts.
[...] Meanwhile, in the 21st century, it is the reading public itself that seeks protection from the distressing health effects of reading. And therein lies the difference.
Today, it is not puritanical religious moralists but undergraduate students who demand that Ovid’s poem should come with a trigger warning. For the first time in their career, my academic colleagues report that some of their students are asking for the right to opt out of reading texts that they find personally offensive or traumatising. This self-diagnosis of vulnerability is unlike the traditional call for a moral quarantine from above. Once upon a time, paternalistic censors infantilised the reading public by insisting that reading literature constitutes a serious risk to its health. Now young readers infantilise themselves by insisting that they and their peers should be shielded from the harm caused by distressing texts....