“It Feels Right to Me”

Focusing in particular on how affect theory has been informed by art practice, this article develops the concept of the “sovereignty of the senses” through queer and feminist installation projects by Rachael Shannon and Zoe Leonard, as well as Alison Bechdel’s account of retreat from the social in her graphic narrative memoir Are You My Mother? (2012). Aiming to articulate notions of sovereignty, democracy, and freedom in affective and sensory terms, it conceives of sovereignty as an embodied practice and something that must be learned and experienced collectively over time rather than a fixed condition of a discrete individual or nation. It explores tensions between Indigenous notions of sovereignty and queer notions of the antisocial or non-sovereign, as well as recent discussions of the commons as an affective category, to offer an anti-racist and decolonial account of queer feminist affect theory and cultural politics.