This article examines commonplaces in the debate over using trigger warnings in college classes with special attention given to the repudiation of “sensitivity.” Arguments against sensitivity have privileged appeals to academic freedom over course and classroom accessibility, but these values may engender conflicting and even contradictory obligations. A rhetorical theory of sensitivity can equip teachers and scholars of rhetoric to make more ethical decisions in the debate over trigger warnings and can lead the field toward a more “sensitive” rhetoric.

ABSTRACTUnder the influence of a reading style that Avital Ronell has called “narcoanalysis,” this article performs a reading of addiction and humility through David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest. Exploring both addiction and humility through the vector of habit, I argue that both habits indicate the non-self-sufficiency of a subject exposed to affection from outside. But while I position addiction alongside humility, both as habits, I also argue that humility parasitizes the totalizing logic of addictive habit. Neither identical to nor simply the opposite of addiction, humility exploits addiction's structure of uncontrollable relationality. Even addiction depends on the affectability or rhetoricity of a subject always already exposed in language. Humility holds this rhetoricity open.