Trauma warnings are on the rise as studies conclude they are ineffective. These warnings, which warn that the content could be sensitive, irritating or trigger disturbing reactions, are now proliferating in the arts world, a realm of emotional upheaval and aesthetic shock. Museums, literature classes, books, shows, operas warn their visitors, readers and spectators. Look, in a series of texts, on this phenomenon of trigger warningsOr TW for the close friends.
The warnings and TW can now be detected in the Quebec book world. Some publishers refute them for fear of infantilizing the reader. Others now add them, to warn of a shocking story and sensitive content, or even out of benevolence towards the reader, to protect him from a bad surprise, or to recontextualize a book. Or again, with a paradoxical irony, to make fun of TW. Look at these additions in fine print.
David Goudreault’s latest novel, Maple (Stanké), opens with a TW unusual: “This work of fiction overflows with violence, explicit references to racism, multiculturalism, homophobia, claustrophobia, hard drugs, misandry, misogyny, sexual exploitation, homicides, feminicides and suicide. »
“Sensitive readers, abstain. To the adventure ! », concludes the author, who proposed this TW “to make fun of the climate of virtue and well-meaning that takes place in the middle,” says Marie-Eve Gélinas, literary fiction director at Librex.
At La Mèche editions, Were there limits if yes I crossed them but it was for love okby Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire, is the only book with a TW, also posed at the request of the author. “It’s a book that is really brutal, develops the publisher Sébastien Dulude. Shocking, very, very hard to read. “For him, the TW is part of “all this information that we give to readers about a book. On the cover of Lapierre-Dallaire, there is a drawing of a vulva, too. We know what we are getting into. »
The whole book already warns
By the cover, the title, the text at the back of the book – this page which we call C4, for “back cover” – the publisher sows information, explains the publisher of La Mèche. They are used to find the right reader… and to filter out a few others along the way, who will put the book back on the stalls, thinking it’s not for them.
The same reflection inhabits the Éditions du remue-ménage, where they nevertheless refuse TW. “We try to be as exhaustive as possible in the C4 or the subtitle”, illustrates the communications and marketing manager, Stéphanie Barahona. “As for the Put the axe. Slam western on incest »by Pattie O’Green (2015).
“Then the way the book is edited (sensitive reader), the way we talk about it (argument), the networks we invest in (communications), the events in which the book participates, all this gives its coordinates to the book. The whole, by juxtaposition, creates the treatment. »
“In short, we try to have marketing practices (means) in line with the subject (ends) of a book. It is more of a process that prevents the instrumentalization and proliferation of trauma and that ensures the preservation of the authenticity of the authors’ words,” continues Ms.me Barahona.
“If we were going there, all of our books, at one level or another, would have to wear TW and C.W. [Content Warning] “, reflects the artistic and commercial director, Anne Migner-Laurin. “The idea of feminist literature is to disturb. Not to spare the world. Our books with more controversial content often end up falling into the hands of the most informed readers, who would feel infantilized or offended to read a TW in the front pages. »
Marie-Eve Gélinas of Librex has a similar thought. For her, attention to readers’ sensitivities is part of editorial work and the search for truthfulness. She gives the example of the two novels by Hugo Meunier, Missed (2022), with a disabled character, and Olivia Vendetta (2021), with trans characters, where a “committee of sensitive readers was added. They have a look informed by a specific life experience that I do not have, explains Mme Gelinas. They complement my expertise. »
Keep away from shocks
The new Hands-free editions have a few books with warnings and TW: the test American lyricsby Pierre Bastien and the comic strip Leaks by Stanley Péan and Jean-Michel Girard, among others. As “a new publisher that does not yet have an established relationship with a readership, it was important to show that we are committed to doing things well,” comments Stéphane Despatie, literary director.
“The choice to put a warning allows a certain freedom to the author while protecting the reader from a bad surprise. We believe in not minimizing the path that words can take. Reading is also a state of availability; an informed reader then knows whether or not he is available to indulge in such and such a proposal that day. »
It is more of a process that prevents the instrumentalization and proliferation of trauma and that ensures the preservation of the authenticity of the words spoken by the authors.
At Héliotrope editions, the author Catherine Mavrikakis, for her part, added a long word to her reissue in paperback. “In 2010, I published The Last Days of Smokey Nelson no questions asked, we read. Here I am in 2021 accepting the reissue of this text, and I need to add a word to open it to come and have a dialogue with the world and what it has become. In 2021, my novel is problematic. His book, at the time, had passed the second selection of the Prix Femina.
The author takes the voice of a black man, and also that of God. She uses the word “nigger” over and over again. “I still believe that my text is sovereign, analyzed the author in an interview. But there are new sensitivities, and I saw very well how I could be used if I did not put a warning. This is not the fight that I want to lead now. “A warning like this, on the use of a word, “it’s all new, to my knowledge”, situates Mathilde Barraband, co-holder of the Franco-Quebec collective research chair on freedom of expression.
A book is not a pop-up
She, who is also a specialist in law and literature at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières, believes that a key to thinking about warnings in publishing is to think about access to texts, different from that of films, where warnings reign. “The book, we will still often buy it in bookstores, or borrow it from the library. Do intermediaries such as booksellers or librarians have classifications to warn the public? »
Yes. In the vast majority of libraries, the child’s subscription card only allows you to borrow documents from this collection, unless you have the agreement of a librarian. The libraries of the City of Montreal have a duly identified Coup de poin collection, for stories on delicate subjects and aimed at young people.
In bookstores, erotic books or horror books are not next to the children’s departments. “The places where the books are placed are not insignificant, continues Mme Barraband. Can the disclaimer in the book chain then be looked at in the same way as for another cultural product? »
Another way of saying it is that one does not start reading the Marquis de Sade by chance. Neither Anne Archet. Chez remue-ménage, which publishes the latter, Mme Migner-Laurin confirms this: “We don’t come across our books ‘by accident’. What works for film and TV cannot be copied from literature so easily. Even less on militant or combat literature. »