Fact versus feeling: What post-truth scholarship can learn from the feminist phenomenology of affect. (February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Harris, Erica
• Other Names: Koekoek Catherine guest-editor.; Zakin Emily guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Philosophy & social criticism. Volume 49:Number 2(2023)
• Page Start: 192
• Page End: 202
• Publication Date: 2023-02
• Subjects: affect -- embodiment -- feminism -- paranoia -- phenomenology -- post-truth -- psychoanalysis; Philosophy -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; 300.1
• DOI: 10.1177/01914537221147931
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0191-4537

Abstract

Although it is a relatively new phenomenon, the most popular descriptions of post-truth operate within the boundaries of the classical dichotomy between emotion and reason that dates back to Plato's Phaedrus : both, to some extent, view emotions as impediments to knowledge and our ability to live morally upstanding lives (248a-b). Post-truth, which is seen as a threat to reason, social cohesion, and fact-based knowledge claims, is either viewed as the outcome of the failure of our cognitive apparatus, or a consequence of our unchecked thirst for stories that provoke dramatic feelings. From a feminist point of view, this should give us pause, since the arguments used to dismiss post-truth resemble those that dismissed women's experiences and emotions as idiosyncratic or irrational. Have post-truth scholars been too hasty in their judgment of emotion-based knowledge claims? In this essay, I explore the transcendental role of emotion in its relationship to epistemic knowledge claims and argue that emotion should be given a more primordial status in the analysis of post-factuality. I do this by exploring the psychoanalytic and phenomenological analysis of affect, especially Sara Ahmed's feminist phenomenology of embodiment.