Football Fan Cultures and Their Structures of Feeling

Abstract

Based on Raymond Williams’s concept of ‘structures of feeling’, this chapter argues that football writing channels subjective emotion into social feeling. Football fandom is a sensual experience, and it is again and again narrated as nostalgic recollections of said experiences. As the spaces of these experiences have become increasingly regulated, football fans’ discontent is often articulated via smells, tastes or sounds of the football ground. New Football Writing therefore frequently signifies differences between pre- and post-Taylor football by emphasising olfactory or auditory impressions. The first half of this chapter critically discusses Williams’s concept and its merits for analysing football fiction, while the second half applies this concept to the study of how our five senses interact with the football ground.