Narrativised spaces: the functions of story in the theme park

Abstract

How shall we know what we are feeling? An everyday question, yet a perplexing question nevertheless. Knowledge and feeling remain held in opposition and knowledge is all too often in the dominant register (Averill 1974). How shall we feel what we are knowing? This second question is seldom on our lips. To be candid, I doubt I will do any justice to this second question in the chapter that follows. Instead I shall be reaching toward knowledge of the emotions, but if you the reader can hold onto the second question then you will have a way of disagreeing with my feelings from the very outset of this journey around the coasts of work, leisure and elitism. Leisure has been defined in many ways by many different researchers and I am going to try and define it as not one but several ways of feeling. Then this suggests a third question that I should try and answer: how can you (or I) feel that way?