A Spy in the House of Rugby: Living (in) the emotional spaces of nationalism and sport

• Dominant discourses of nationalism and sport silence alternative, especially women's, voices.
• Ethnographic fiction captures the complexities and contradictions of national belonging.
• Affective practice emerges at the intersection of individual, relational and cultural meaning-making.

This article creatively engages with the emotional landscapes of nationalism and belonging, attempting to bring to life nationalism's intensity, complexity and contradictory nature. It recognizes that belonging constitutes “a dynamic emotional attachment that relates individuals to the material and social worlds that they inhabit and experience” (Wood and Waite, 2011: 201). The intention is to reveal the emotional negotiations that arise for women who are marginalized from, but fully implicated in, the lived experience of their nation hosting a men's international sports event. This approach is grounded in the reality that nationalism is always gendered, and supports feminist attempts to interrogate discursive constructions of women's place in, and experiences of, national identity. The article argues for the value of creative representational approaches as powerful research tools that put “the visceral … in touch with the social” (Wetherell, 2012: 10). An intensive period of fieldwork is thus distilled and re-presented through the voice of a fictional composite character whose blog reveals multi-layered, multi-sensorial, interactive experiences of sport and nationalism.