The Existentialist philosophers, Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, argue that the human condition is existentially free, and following this phenomenology, the individual has a responsibility to act on her freedom and hold herself accountable for the choices that she makes. This is a view that human beings are constituted by their subjectivity: the unique combination of their situation and their choices within their situation. I argue that the existential imperative contributes to a cultural master narrative - a term used (...) by philosopher Hilde Lindermann Nelson that is often oppressively imposed upon sexual assault survivors. I further argue that the survivor’s construction of counterstory, or personal narrative, allows the survivor to meet the existential imperative in a non-oppressive way, in addition to challenge cultural master narratives. The production of counterstories, when presented to a larger audience, has the potential to alter master narratives so they are more inclusive and diverse. (shrink)

Contemporary philosopher Scott Alexander Howard appears to discredit time comparison views in order to conceptualize nostalgia as “Proustian.” My goal in this paper is to contest his theory by suggesting that Proustian nostalgia is a form of memory representation rather than an emotion. In turn, I describe emotions as value judgments corresponding to our psychological needs and desires, a notion accredited to Martha Nussbaum, and nostalgia as marked by its bittersweet valence, a concept aired out by Jesse Prinz. Inspired by (...) the narrative identity theories of Dan McAdams, Jefferson Singer, and Daniel Dennett, I propose nostalgia to be the emotional symbolization, as described by Susanne Langer, of value judgments ensconced in our memories. Nostalgia, thereby, ties together the disparate timeframes of our life narrative and instills us with a sense of purposefulness. (shrink)