Liminality

Liminality

Funny, circular, weird:

Liminality describes a state of being in-between. Often it describes a transitional period in the process of spiritual growth or change in social status. Liminality is also related to "outsiderness", although it is not the same as it.

"Liminality" is a term given currency in twentieth century anthropology by Victor Turner of the University of Chicago. Limen in Latin means threshold, and anthropologists like Turner have become interested in a certain state experienced by persons as they pass over the threshold from one stage of life to another. For instance, Turner notes that the rite of passage at puberty has three phases: separation from one's status as child in a household, then a liminal stage, and finally reintegration into society as a full and independent member with rights and responsibilities that the initiate did not have before. During the liminal stage, the between stage, one's status becomes ambiguous; one is "neither here nor there," one is "betwixt and between all fixed points of classification,"2 and thus the form and rules of both his earlier state and his state-to-come are suspended. For the moment, one is an outsider; one is on the margins, in an indeterminate state. Turner is fascinated by this marginality, this zone of indeterminacy. He argues that it is from the standpoint of this marginal zone that the great artists, writers, and social critics have been able to look past the social forms in order to see society from the outside and to bring in a message from beyond it.

Robert bringhurst
Myth, language

Also, lots of folk lore and myth describe liminal places or creatures: crossroads, boundaries, tricksters; places that represent a crossing point, and character types that subvert the order of things, perhaps to provide perspective or reveal truth, or bring about change.

I was Googling all this stuff recently, late at night, and I began to get that creepy, FIAT (Fundamental Inter-connectedness of All Things), sensation in my gut and at the back of my scalp, in that the more I read, the more it applied to my experience.

I should say first here that bi- or trans-cultural people, 1st and 2nd generationals, are of course potentially both outsiders and liminal, because of their in-between existence.

Silly reflection on the fact as a teen, I used to read a magazine called Shaman's Drum. Why? How would an average suburban white kid pick up that habit?

Moreover, I have always been fascinated by Tricksters. Specifically, I cannot explain them. I can't express a satisfactory understanding of them, despite my reading, and yet I am always drawn to that type. They are so expansive in their function. In their portrayals. I wanted to know the psychology; the social psychology, that they inhabit.

I once intended to try a research PhD comparing Native American Trickster portrayal to the Irish Amadon na Briona (sic?), or Fool of the Forth, that roams the roads on a certain night and makes simpletons of those it encounters. Of course, the "simpletons" are credited with otherworldly insight in folk understanding.

How eerie to discover, at age 36, an understanding of "liminality", "outsiderness", and "bi-culturalism" that in one fell swoop so accurately explains your undirected habits for the last 20 years?

Creepy doesn't describe the sensation of almost immediately discovering your own name (sake)appear as a thinker concerned with some of these exact issues!