ABSTRACT
Collective feelings are usually ascribed to the actions and experiences of a mass of people. Collective emotions are involved in creating the reality. In the case of racial identity, they create a feeling of certainty within the subject that is evoked through social realities and is constantly being reinforced. Social obstacles and acts of discrimination accumulate in the subject's experience to produce a more general inner bearing that finds expression in the individual's outward behaviour. Each individual self receives faith from the group. But the group is also constituted through the shared feeling of certainty. In the fan group, the collective noise drowns out the negative message of this inner voice and the sense of unease that it evokes. The unfounded absolute safety and certainty of early childhood is reinvigorated in the intoxication of the collective ritual.
