2025/12/17 by Tris Hedges · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art #Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy #Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre
paper · pdf · doi:10.5206/fpq/2025.4.22668
openalex publication_date 2025/12/17 · openalex created_date 2025/12/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
In this paper I undertake to describe and theorize an important way in which subjects are kept “in line” with heteronormativity at the level of embodied affectivity. To do this, I synthesize a phenomenological understanding of sexuality with contemporary work in philosophy of emotion to thematize a form of self-doubt that is felt in relation to the experience of queer desires. I argue that the elicitation of such feelings of self-doubt is a crucial way in which a wider affective milieu of heterosexism is unjustly enforced. To achieve these aims, I first conceptualize heterosexism as an affective milieu, meaning a sociocultural system with prescribed “feeling rules.” Section 2 then draws on phenomenological discussions of sexuality to show how (erotic) desire is an existentially significant aspect of our affective lives. I then develop an account of self-doubt, in section 3, as something felt, self-alienating, and self-involving. Finally in sections 4 and 5, through examples drawn from autofictional literature and film, I parse out two forms of self-doubt and the unjust harms they incur. First, self-doubt as an existential background feeling. Second, episodic self-doubt which is enacted to regulate the salience, legitimacy, or self-importance of a particular affective experience.