Introducing

1 Introducing Before we are anything else, we are feeling bodies. Feelings – novel, satisfying, intense, prolonged, challenging or transcendent – are sought by bungee jumpers, mountaineers and practitioners of ‘extreme’ sports; by millions of consumers of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and other recre- ational drugs; by users of pornography, music and painkillers; and by consumers at festivals, carnivals, fairgrounds, music events, cinemas and sports stadia. The management of feeling is integral to identities that are both gendered (‘big boys don’t cry’) and cultural (‘keep a stiff upper lip’) and emphasised by advice to ‘keep a cool head’ to make unbiased, ratio- nal decisions. Simultaneously, the fabric of everyday relating includes countless conversations that begin with some reference to feeling (“So, how are you today?”), conversations of which a sizeable minority take feeling as their primary focus (“I’m sorry I upset you”). In fact, the ubiq- uity and relevance of feeling is such that sometimes it is even parodied (“so – how does that make you feel ?”) [First paragraph]