Liminality - Philosophical Concept | Alexandria
Liminality, a threshold state, describes the ambiguous transitional phase in a rite of passage, a space betwixt and between established orders and identities. Often viewed as a mere pause, it belies a potent period of transformation. Is it emptiness or potential? A void or a crucible?
Though the concept's roots stretch back to the ethnographic observations of earlier scholars, it was anthropologist Arnold van Gennep who formalized the term in his 1909 work, Les rites de passage. Van Gennep identified rites of passage as having three stages: separation (preliminal), transition (liminal), and incorporation (postliminal). While overlooked for years, this laid the groundwork for the concept's later and fuller development. Consider the year of its articulation, a time of immense social change in Europe, where the old world struggled against encroaching modernity––the fin-de-siècle.
It was Victor Turner, building on Van Gennep's framework, who significantly expanded the theory of liminality in the 1960s. Turner focused on the liminal phase itself, examining its ambiguity, paradox, and potential for generating communitas, a sense of collective unity and egalitarianism that transcends social structures. His work, particularly The Ritual Process (1969), presented liminality not as merely a temporary condition, but as a source of social and cultural creativity. Think of initiation rituals, pilgrimages, or even moments of social protest; these share a dissolution of structure, heightened emotion, and creative energy. Does this explain periods of intense artistic output following social upheaval?
Liminality, far from being confined to anthropological discourse, has seeped into art, literature, psychology, and popular culture. From ghost stories, replete with ambiguous figures crossing between worlds, to modern discussions of identity fluidity, the idea of being "in-between" continues to resonate. Are we, in an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world, all perpetually in a liminal state? The question remains: do we fear these in-between places, or embrace their transformative potential?