Abstract
This chapter offers an analysis of ‘Safe Spaces’ policies in UK Universities. These policies encourage participants to engage in reflexive behaviour, acknowledging societal privilege and dynamics of oppression. Safe spaces are criticised for impinging on freedom of speech, and being a means for students to avoid the ‘truths of life’. Drawing on Butler and Fraser, I contend that safe spaces are counterpublics. Safe spaces offer an imperfect but vital opposition to the socialisation of resilience inherent in neoliberalism. Safe spaces are for recuperation and the formation of resistance. I argue that criticism of safe spaces is also a critique of those who reject neoliberal resilience.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adams, R. (2017, June 7). UK Universities Fall Down Global League Tables After Budget Cuts. The Guardian.
Ahmad, A. (2015). A Note on Call Out Culture. Briarpatch. Regina, Saskatchewan: Briarpatch Incorporated.
Ahmed, S. (2010). Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 35, 571–594.
Ahmed, S. (2014). Willful Subjects. Duke University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2015, June 25). Against Students. Feminist Killjoys [Online]. Available from https://feministkilljoys.com/2015/06/25/against-students/. Accessed 8 Aug 2017.
Alexander, H. (2017, June 4). Nigel Farage Says London Blighted by “Wholly Muslim Areas” as He Defends Trump’s Response to Attack. The Daily Telegraph.
Allen, K., & Bull, A. (2017, October 3). Beware of the Positive University: WonkHE Higher Education: Policy, People and Politics [Online]. Available from http://wonkhe.com/blogs/beware-of-the-positive-university/. Accessed 4 Jan 2018.
Amenabar, T. (2016, May 19). The New Vocabulary of Protest: What Students Mean by Terms Like ‘Safe Space’. The Washington Post.
Barrett, N. (1999). The Anti-Fascist Movement in South-East Lancashire, 1933–1940: The Divergent Experiences of Manchester and Nelson. In T. Kirk & A. McElligott (Eds.), Opposing Fascism: Community, Authority and Resistance in Europe (pp. 48–62). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Binnie, G. (2016, August 18). Struggling Students Are Not ‘Lacking Resilience’—They Need More Support. The Guardian, Thursday.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bowden, G. (2016, April 11). Stephen Fry Speaks About the Erosion of ‘Free Speech’ on Student Campuses in Controversial Rubin Report Interview Huffington Post.
Bracke, S. (2016). Bouncing Back. Vulnerability and Resistance in Times of Resilience. Vulnerability in Resistance, 52–75.
Butler, J. (2006). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.
Butler, J. (2018). Judith Butler Explains Letter in Support of Avital Ronell—Letters—Blogs—The Chronicle of Higher Education. Chronicle.com [Online]. Available at https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/judith-butler-explains-letter-in-support-of-avital-ronell/. Accessed 28 Sept 2018.
Butler, J., Gambetti, Z., & Sabsay, L. (2016). Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham: Duke University Press.
Butterworth, B. (2018, January 3). Labour Calls for Government to Fire Toby Young Over ‘Misogyny and Homophobia’. PinkNews.com.
Byron, K. (2017). From Infantilizing to World Making: Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings on Campus. Family Relations, 66, 116–125.
Campbell, B., & Manning, J. (2015). The New Millennial ‘Morality’: Highly Sensitive and Easily Offended. Time. New York City: Time Inc.
Clark, D. H. (1977). The Therapeutic Community. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 131, 553–564.
Collective, C. R. (1977). A Black Feminist Statement. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 42, 271–280.
Connell, R. (2002). The Social Organization of Masculinity. In S. M. Whitehead & F. Barrett (Eds.), The Masculinities Reader (1st ed.). Cambridge: Polity.
Denovan, A., & Macaskill, A. (2017). Stress and Subjective Well-Being Among First Year UK Undergraduate Students. Journal of Happiness Studies, 18, 505–525.
Department for Education, & Johnson, J., MP. (2017). Jo Johnson Calls for Free Speech to Be Protected on Campus. gov.UK [Online]. Available https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jo-johnson-calls-for-free-speech-to-be-protected-on-campus. Accessed 3 Jan 2018.
Douglas, M. (2002). Implicit Meanings. London: Routledge.
Duggan, L. (2014). On Trauma and Trigger Warnings, in Three Parts. Bully Bloggers [Online]. Available from https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/on-trauma-and-trigger-warnings-in-three-parts/. Accessed 3 Jan 2018.
Duggan, L. (2018). The Full Catastrophe. Bully Bloggers [Online]. Available at https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/the-full-catastrophe/. Accessed 28 Sept 2018.
Dzodan, F. (2014). Come One, Come All! Feminist and Social Justice Blogging as Performance and Bloodshed. Libcom.org [Online]. Available https://libcom.org/library/come-one-come-all-feminist-social-justice-blogging-performance-bloodshed. Accessed 16 Aug 2017.
Ehrenreich, B. (2010). Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. London: Granta Books.
Ferber, A. L. (1999). White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Foster, D. (2018). Free Speech Works Both Ways—As Toby Young Is Finding Out. The Guardian.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Pantheon.
Fox, C. (2016). I Find That Offensive! London: Biteback Publishing.
Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. Social Text, 25, 56–80.
Garton Ash, T. (2016, September 16). Safe Spaces Are Not the Only Threat to Free Speech. The Guardian.
Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist Media Culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), 147–166.
Gosden, E. (2016). Student Accused of Violating University ‘Safe Space’ by Raising Her Hand. The Telegraph [Online]. Available at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/03/student-accused-of-violating-university-safe-space-by-raising-he/. Accessed 1 Oct 2018.
Habermas, J. (1991). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hacker, D. (2018). Crying on Campus. In Y. Taylor & K. Lahad (Eds.), Feeling Academic in the Neoliberal University: Feminist Fights, Flights and Failures. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Halberstam, J. (2011). Unbecoming: Queer Negativity/Radical Passivity. In B. Davies & J. Funke (Eds.), Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Halberstam, J. (2014a). Triggering Me, Triggering You: Making Up Is Hard to Do. Bully Bloggers [Online]. Available from https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/triggering-me-triggering-you-making-up-is-hard-to-do/. Accessed 3 Jan 2018.
Halberstam, J. (2014b, July 15). You’re Triggering Me! The Neo-liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Bully Blogger [Online]. Available from https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/. Accessed 8 Aug 2017.
Harris, A. (2005). VII. Discourses of Desire as Governmentality: Young Women, Sexuality and the Significance of Safe Spaces. Feminism & Psychology, 15, 39–43.
Hetti, T. (2017). “Call Out Culture” Is Toxic and Problematic. Affinity Magazine.
Ho, K. (2017). Tackling the Term: What Is a Safe Space? Harvard Political Review [Online]. Available http://harvardpolitics.com/harvard/what-is-a-safe-space/. Accessed 8 Aug 2017.
Hunt, C. J. (2016). “It’s Just a Joke”: The Subtle Effects of Offensive Language. Melbourne [Online]. Available http://theconversation.com/its-just-a-joke-the-subtle-effects-of-offensive-language-62440. Accessed 15 Aug 2017.
Koyama, E. (2000). Whose Feminism Is It Anyway? Portland: Emi Koyama.
Kravetz, D. (1978). Consciousness-Raising Groups in the 1970s. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 3, 168–186.
Laura. (2012, May 17). There’s Nothing Radical About Transphobia. The F Word Blog: Contemporary UK Feminism [Online]. Available from https://www.thefword.org.uk/2012/05/theres_nothing/. Accessed 16 Aug 2017.
Leiter, B. (2018). CHE Article on the Letter Defending Professor Ronell. Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog [Online]. Available at http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2018/06/che-article-on-the-letter-defending-professor-ronell.html. Accessed 28 Sept 2018.
Lewis, S. (2012). Being Secure in the Space of Occupation: Notes from a Student-Led Experiment in New York. openDemocracy [Online]. Available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/sophie-lewis/being-secure-in-space-of-occupation-notes-from-student-led-experiment-in-n. Accessed 28 Sept 2018.
Lewis, R., Sharp, E., Remnant, J., & Redpath, R. (2015). ‘Safe Spaces’: Experiences of Feminist Women-Only Space. Sociological Research Online, 20, 9.
Lock, H. (2016, March 10). Student Protests: Are Young People Too Sensitive These Days? The Guardian.
Lopez, D. (2017). The Beginning of the End of Identity Politics? Red Flag. Melbourne: Socialist Alternative.
Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2015). How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campuses. The Atlantic. Boston, MA.
Mackinnon, C. A. (1982). Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 7, 515–544.
Malshmann, E., & Oakley, A. (2016). On Safe Spaces and the Ethics of ‘Clickbait’ Journalism. The Cambridge Student [Online]. Available at https://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/editorial/0034993-on-safe-spaces-and-the-ethics-of-clickbait-journalism.html. Accessed 1 Oct 2018.
Manchester University Students’ Union. (2016). Safe Spaces Policy. Manchester.
Martínez-San Miguel, Y., & Tobias, S. (2014). Safe Feminist Spaces: Reflections About the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers-New Brunswick. Springer: The Entrepreneurial University.
Mason, R. (2016, September 14). Theresa May Criticises University ‘Safe Spaces’ for Shutting Down Debate. The Guardian.
McRobbie, A. (2004). Post-Feminism and Popular Culture. Feminist Media Studies, 4, 255–264.
Mintz, L. E. (1985). Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation. American Quarterly, 37, 71–80.
Nicholson, R. (2016, November 28). “Poor Little Snowflake”—The Defining Insult of 2016. The Guardian.
O’Keefe, T. (2016). Making Feminist Sense of No-Platforming. Feminist Review, 113, 85–92.
Okundaye, J. (2016). On the Vitriol Against Safe Spaces. Varsity Online [Online]. Available at https://www.varsity.co.uk/features/10685. Accessed 1 Oct 2018.
Orwell, G. (2013). Politics and the English Language. London: Penguin UK.
Page, C. (2015, January 23). Transphobic Feminism: An Oxymoron. Varsity.
Pearl, S. (2018). When a Queer Feminist Professor Is Accused of Harassment. Lilith Magazine [Online]. Available at https://www.lilith.org/blog/2018/08/when-a-queer-feminist-professor-is-accused-of-harassment/. Accessed 28 Sept 2018.
Pells, R. (2016, April 25). NUS ‘No Platform’ Policy Goes ‘Too Far’ and Threatens Free Speech, Peter Tatchell Warns. The Independent.
Pennington, L. (2012, December 6). Feminism, Men, and Women-Only Spaces. The Huffington Post.
Phipps, A. (2014). The Politics of the Body: Gender in a Neoliberal and Neoconservative Age. Cambridge: Wiley.
Rawlinson, K., & Luxmore, S. (2018, January 3). Doubts Cast on DfE Claims of Toby Young’s Qualifications for Watchdog Job. The Guardian.
Roberts, J. (2003). The Aesthetics of Free Speech: Rethinking the Public Sphere. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Rose, F. (2017, March 30). Safe Spaces on Campus Are Creating Intolerant Students. The Huffington Post.
Sears, A., & Osten, C. (2003). The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. Nashville: Broadman & Holman.
Sehgal-Cuthbert, A. (2014, May 20). Letter: Teaching Consent: A Dangerous Game? Varsity.
Seidler, V. J. (2010). The Achilles Heel Reader: Men, Sexual Politics and Socialism. London: Routledge.
Serano, J. (2013). Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. Berkeley: Seal Press.
Serano, J. (2014, July 13). Regarding “Generation Wars”: Some Reflections on the Recent Jack Halberstam Essay. In Whipping Girl [Online]. Available from http://juliaserano.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/regarding-generation-wars-some.html. Accessed 15 Aug 2017.
Sheldon, R. (2016). Tragic Encounters and Ordinary Ethics: Palestine–Israel in British Universities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spiked. (2017). Free Speech University Rankings 2017 [Online]. www.spiked-online.com. Available http://www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings/profile/leeds#.Wk0N5lVl_cs. Accessed 3 Jan 2018.
Stavvers. (2012, May 29). Shelia Jeffreys: Another Angry Woman [Online]. Available from https://stavvers.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/sheila-jeffreys-radfem2012-and-the-imaginary-trans-conspiracy/. Accessed 16 Aug 2017.
Stryker, S., & Whittle, S. (2006). The Transgender Studies Reader. London: Taylor & Francis.
Tatum, E. (2014). Getting Called Out: Why Acknowledging Oppression Matters More Than Your Hurt Feelings. Everyday Feminism.
The University of Edinburgh. (2018). Building Student Resilience Model [Online]. Available https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/levels/academic-transitions-toolkit/building-student-resilience-model. Accessed 2 Jan 2018.
Travers, R. (2017, February 13). University ‘Safe Spaces’ Are a Dangerous Fallacy—They Do Not Exist in the Real Word. The Daily Telegraph.
Volcano, A. (2012). Police at the Borders. In C. B. Daring, J. Rogue, D. Shannon, & A. Volcano (Eds.), Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Waldman, K. (2016). What Science Can Tell Us About Trigger Warnings. Slate.com [Online]. Available http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/cover_story/2016/09/what_science_can_tell_us_about_trigger_warnings.html. Accessed 5 Aug 2017.
Williams, Z. (2016, November 15). The Dangerous Fantasy Behind Trump’s Normalisation. The Guardian.
Wilson, I. (2016). Safe Spaces Are Not Demanding Very Much. Huffington Post [Online]. Available at https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/imogen-wilson/safe-spaces_b_9618468.html. Accessed 27 Sept 2018.
Wyatt, C. (2016). Student Subjected to ‘Safe Space’ Vote Simply for Raising Her Hand. HuffPost UK [Online]. Available at https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2016/04/01/safe-space-gesture_n_9592090.html. Accessed 1 Oct 2018.
Young, P. (2015). Safe Spaces as Resistance. In Brown Political Review. Rhode Island: Brown University.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Lucy Wilkins, without whom this work would have been impossible.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Waugh, C. (2019). In Defence of Safe Spaces: Subaltern Counterpublics and Vulnerable Politics in the Neoliberal University. In: Breeze, M., Taylor, Y., Costa, C. (eds) Time and Space in the Neoliberal University. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15246-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15246-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15245-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15246-8
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)