Liminality

In anthropology, liminality (from Latin līmen 'a threshold')[1] is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation
that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status
but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.[2] During a rite's
liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold"[3] between their previous way of structuring their identity,
time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes).

The concept of liminality was first developed in the early twentieth century by folklorist Arnold van
Gennep and later taken up by Victor Turner.[4] More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe
political and cultural change as well as rites.[5][6] During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may
be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes
once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.[7] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a
fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.[8] The term has
also passed into popular usage and has been expanded to include liminoid experiences that are more
relevant to post-industrial society.[9]

Rites of passage

Arnold van Gennep

Van Gennep, who coined the term liminality, published in 1909 his Rites de Passage, a work that explores
and develops the concept of liminality in the context of rites in small-scale societies.[10] Van Gennep began
his book by identifying the various categories of rites. He distinguished between those that result in a
change of status for an individual or social group, and those that signify transitions in the passage of time. In
doing so, he placed a particular emphasis on rites of passage, and claimed that "such rituals marking,
helping, or celebrating individual or collective passages through the cycle of life or of nature exist in every
culture, and share a specific three-fold sequential structure".[8]

This three-fold structure, as established by van Gennep, is made up of the following components:[10]

preliminal rites (or rites of separation): This stage involves a metaphorical "death", as the
initiate is forced to leave something behind by breaking with previous practices and routines.
liminal rites (or transition rites): Two characteristics are essential to these rites. First, the rite
"must follow a strictly prescribed sequence, where everybody knows what to do and how".[8]
Second, everything must be done "under the authority of a master of ceremonies".[8] The
destructive nature of this rite allows for considerable changes to be made to the identity of
the initiate. This middle stage (when the transition takes place) "implies an actual passing
through the threshold that marks the boundary between two phases, and the term 'liminality'
was introduced in order to characterize this passage."[8]
postliminal rites (or rites of incorporation): During this stage, the initiate is re-incorporated
into society with a new identity, as a "new" being.
Turner confirmed his nomenclature for "the three phases of passage from one culturally defined state or
status to another...preliminal, liminal, and postliminal".[11]
Beyond this structural template, Van Gennep also suggested four categories of rites that emerge as universal
across cultures and societies. He suggested that there are four types of social rites of passage that are
replicable and recognizable among many ethnographic populations.[12] They include:

Passage of people from one status to another, initiation ceremonies in which an outsider is
brought into the group. This includes marriage and initiation ceremonies that move one from
the status of an outsider to an insider.
Passage from one place to another, such as moving houses, moving to a new city, etc.
Passage from one situation to another: beginning university, starting a new job, and
graduating high school or university.
Passage of time such as New Year celebrations and birthdays.[12]
Van Gennep considered rites of initiation to be the most typical rite. To gain a better understanding of
"tripartite structure" of liminal situations, one can look at a specific rite of initiation: the initiation of
youngsters into adulthood, which Turner considered the most typical rite. In such rites of passage, the
experience is highly structured. The first phase (the rite of separation) requires the child to go through a
separation from his family; this involves his/her "death" as a child, as childhood is effectively left behind. In
the second stage, initiands (between childhood and adulthood) must pass a "test" to prove they are ready for
adulthood. If they succeed, the third stage (incorporation) involves a celebration of the "new birth" of the
adult and a welcoming of that being back into society.

By constructing this three-part sequence, van Gennep identified a pattern he believed was inherent in all
ritual passages. By suggesting that such a sequence is universal (meaning that all societies use rites to
demarcate transitions), van Gennep made an important claim (one that not many anthropologists make, as
they generally tend to demonstrate cultural diversity while shying away from universality).[12]

An anthropological rite, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially
their social status.;[13] and in 'the first phase (of separation) comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the
detachment of the individual...from an earlier fixed point in the social structure.[14] Their status thus
becomes liminal. In such a liminal situation, "the initiands live outside their normal environment and are
brought to question their self and the existing social order through a series of rituals that often involve acts
of pain: the initiands come to feel nameless, spatio-temporally dislocated and socially unstructured".[15] In
this sense, liminal periods are "destructive" as well as "constructive", meaning that "the formative
experiences during liminality will prepare the initiand (and his/her cohort) to occupy a new social role or
status, made public during the reintegration rituals".[15]

Victor Turner
Turner, who is considered to have "re-discovered the importance of liminality", first came across van
Gennep's work in 1963.[6] In 1967 he published his book The Forest of Symbols, which included an essay
entitled Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage. Within the works of Turner,
liminality began to wander away from its narrow application to ritual passages in small-scale societies.[6] In
the various works he completed while conducting his fieldwork amongst the Ndembu in Zambia, he made
numerous connections between tribal and non-tribal societies, "sensing that what he argued for the Ndembu
had relevance far beyond the specific ethnographic context".[6] He became aware that liminality "...served
not only to identify the importance of in-between periods, but also to understand the human reactions to
liminal experiences: the way liminality shaped personality, the sudden foregrounding of agency, and the
sometimes dramatic tying together of thought and experience".[6]
'The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae ("threshold
people") are necessarily ambiguous'.[16] One's sense of identity
dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation, but also the
possibility of new perspectives. Turner posits that, if liminality is
regarded as a time and place of withdrawal from normal modes of
social action, it potentially can be seen as a period of scrutiny for
central values and axioms of the culture where it occurs.[17]—one
where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior
Initiation ritual of boys in Malawi. The
are undone. In such situations, "the very structure of society [is] ritual marks the passage from child
temporarily suspended"[8] to adult male, a liminal stage in the
context of their lives.
'According to Turner, all liminality must eventually dissolve, for it is
a state of great intensity that cannot exist very long without some
sort of structure to stabilize it...either the individual returns to the surrounding social structure...or else
liminal communities develop their own internal social structure, a condition Turner calls "normative
communitas"'.[18]

Turner also worked on the idea of communitas, the feeling of camaraderie associated among a group
experiencing the same liminal experience or rite.[19] Turner defined three distinct and not always sequential
forms of communitas, which he describes as "that 'antistructural' state at stake in the liminal phase of ritual
forms."[19] The first, spontaneous communitas, is described as "a direct, immediate, and total confrontation
of human identities" in which those involved share a feeling of synchronicity and a total immersion into one
fluid event.[19] The second form, ideological communitas, which aims at interrupting spontaneous
communitas through some type of intervention which would result in the formation of a utopian society in
which all actions would be carried out at the level of spontaneous communitas.[19] The third, normative
communitas, deals with a group of society attempting to grow relationships and support spontaneous
communitas on a relatively permanent basis, subjecting it to laws of society and "denaturing the grace" of
the accepted form of camaraderie.[19]

The work of Victor Turner has vital significance in turning attention to this concept introduced by Arnold
van Gennep. However, Turner's approach to liminality has two major shortcomings. First, Turner was keen
to limit the meaning of the concept to the concrete settings of small-scale tribal societies, preferring the
neologism "liminoid" coined by him to analyse certain features of the modern world. However, Agnes
Horvath (2013) argues that the term can and should be applied to concrete historical events as offering a
vital means for historical and sociological understanding. Second, Turner attributed a rather univocally
positive connotation to liminal situations as ways of renewal when liminal situations can be periods of
uncertainty, anguish, even existential fear: a facing of the abyss in void.[20]

Liminality theory today

In contemporary anthologies such as Neither Here nor There: The Many Voices of Liminality,[21] and The
Liminal Loop: Astonishing Stories of Discovery and Hope[22] topics such as poetic interpretations, Central
American notions of the in-between, pilgrimage, spiritual transformation, crisis passages, war, natural
disaster, cross-cultural adoption, climate change and spirituality, religious shifts, cyborgs, critical illness,
prison, social collapse and reconstruction, gender, and communities in conflict, extreme adventure,
initiation, process of transition, ritual, complex liminalities, spiritual practices, black experience, education
abroad, genocide, therapeutic practices, ecological collapse, and the arts are explored by a variety of
thinkers and practitioners in light of their liminal nature.

Types
Liminality has both spatial and temporal dimensions, and can be applied to a variety of subjects: individuals,
larger groups (cohorts or villages), whole societies, and possibly even entire civilizations.[6] The following
chart summarizes the different dimensions and subjects of liminal experiences, and also provides the main
characteristics and key examples of each category.[6]

Individual Group Society

A whole society facing a

Sudden events affecting sudden event (sudden
one's life (death, divorce, invasion, natural
Ritual passage to adulthood disaster, a plague) where
illness) or individualized
Moment (almost always in cohort social distinctions and
ritual passage (baptism,
groups); graduation normal hierarchy
ritual passage to
ceremonies, etc. disappear;
adulthood, as for example
among the Ndembu). Carnivals;
Revolutions.

Ritual passage to adulthood,

which may extend into weeks
or months in some societies;
Period Critical life-stages; Group travels; Wars;
Puberty or teenage years. Going to university, college or Revolutionary periods.
taking a gap year between
secondary school and
college/university.

Individuals standing Religious fraternities, ethnic

"outside society", by minorities, sexual and gender
choice or designated (as minorities; Prolonged wars, enduring
with exiled persons); political instability,
Immigrant groups betwixt and
prolonged intellectual
Epoch (or Monkhood; between;
confusion; Incorporation
life-span In some tribal societies, Old and new cultures; and reproduction of
duration) individuals remain Groups that live at the edge liminality into
"dangerous" or excluded of "normal structures", may "structures";
because of a failed ritual be perceived as dangerous Modernity as "permanent
passage; (e.g., punks) and/or "holy" liminality".
Twins are permanently (e.g, monks living by strict
liminal in some societies. vows).

Another significant variable is "scale," or the "degree" to which an individual or group experiences
liminality.[6] In other words, "there are degrees of liminality, and…the degree depends on the extent to
which the liminal experience can be weighed against persisting structures."[6] When the spatial and
temporal are both affected, the intensity of the liminal experience increases and so-called "pure liminality" is
approached.[6]

In large-scale societies
The concept of a liminal situation can also be applied to entire
societies that are going through a crisis or a "collapse of order".[6]
Philosopher Karl Jaspers made a significant contribution to this idea
through his concept of the "Axial Age", which was "an in-between
period between two structured world-views and between two
rounds of empire building; it was an age of creativity where "man
asked radical questions", and where the "unquestioned grasp on life
is loosened".[6] It was essentially a time of uncertainty which, most Destruction, from The Course of
importantly, involved entire civilizations. Seeing as liminal periods Empire by Thomas Cole (1836)
are both destructive and constructive, the ideas and practices that
emerge from these liminal historical periods are of extreme
importance, as they will "tend to take on the quality of structure".[6] Events such as political or social
revolutions (along with other periods of crisis) can thus be considered liminal, as they result in the complete
collapse of order and can lead to significant social change.[15]

Liminality in large-scale societies differs significantly from liminality found in ritual passages in small-scale
societies. One primary characteristic of liminality (as defined van Gennep and Turner) is that there is a way
in as well as a way out.[6] In ritual passages, "members of the society are themselves aware of the liminal
state: they know that they will leave it sooner or later, and have 'ceremony masters' to guide them through
the rituals".[6] However, in those liminal periods that affect society as a whole, the future (what comes after
the liminal period) is completely unknown, and there is no "ceremony master" who has gone through the
process before and that can lead people out of it.[6] In such cases, liminal situations can become dangerous.
They allow for the emergence of "self-proclaimed ceremony masters", that assume leadership positions and
attempt to "[perpetuate] liminality and by emptying the liminal moment of real creativity, [turn] it into a
scene of mimetic rivalry".[6]

Depth psychology
Jungians have often seen the individuation process of self-realization as taking place within a liminal space.
"Individuation begins with a withdrawal from normal modes of socialisation, epitomized by the breakdown
of the persona...liminality".[23] Thus "what Turner's concept of social liminality does for status in society,
Jung [...] does for the movement of the person through the life process of individuation".[24] Individuation
can be seen as a "movement through liminal space and time, from disorientation to integration [...] What
takes place in the dark phase of liminality is a process of breaking down [...] in the interest of "making
whole" one's meaning, purpose and sense of relatedness once more" [25] As an archetypal figure, "the
trickster is a symbol of the liminal state itself, and of its permanent accessibility as a source of recreative
power".[26]

Jungian-based analytical psychology is also deeply rooted in the ideas of liminality. The idea of a 'container'
or 'vessel' as a key player in the ritual process of psychotherapy has been noted by many and Carl Jung's
objective was to provide a space he called "a temenos, a magic circle, a vessel, in which the transformation
inherent in the patient's condition would be allowed to take place."[12]

But other depth psychologies speak of a similar process. Carl Rogers describes "the 'out-of-this-world'
quality that many therapists have remarked upon, a sort of trance-like feeling in the relationship that client
and therapist emerge from at the end of the hour, as if from a deep well or tunnel.[27] The French talk of
how the psychoanalytic setting 'opens/forges the "intermediate space," "excluded middle," or "between"
that figures so importantly in Irigaray's writing".[28] Marion Milner claimed that "a temporal spatial frame
also marks off the special kind of reality of a psycho-analytic session...the different kind of reality that is
within it".[29]

Jungians however have perhaps been most explicit about the "need to accord space, time and place for
liminal feeling" [30]—as well about the associated dangers, "two mistakes: we provide no ritual space at all
in our lives [...] or we stay in it too long".[31] Indeed, Jung's psychology has itself been described as "a form
of 'permanent liminality' in which there is no need to return to social structure".[32]

Examples of general usage

In rites
In the context of rites, liminality is being artificially produced, as
opposed to those situations (such as natural disasters) in which it
can occur spontaneously.[6] In the simple example of a college
graduation ceremony, the liminal phase can actually be extended to
include the period of time between when the last assignment was
finished (and graduation was assured) all the way through reception
of the diploma. That no man's land represents the limbo associated
Liminal phase of a rite of passage:
with liminality. The stress of accomplishing tasks for college has
Albert Anker's Die Ziviltrauung ("The
been lifted, yet the individual has not moved on to a new stage in Civil Marriage"), 1887
life (psychologically or physically). The result is a unique
perspective on what has come before, and what may come next.

It can include the period between when a couple get engaged and their marriage or between death and
burial, for which cultures may have set ritual observances. Even sexually liberal cultures may strongly
disapprove of an engaged spouse having sex with another person during this time. When a marriage
proposal is initiated there is a liminal stage between the question and the answer during which the social
arrangements of both parties involved are subject to transformation and inversion; a sort of "life stage
limbo" so to speak in that the affirmation or denial can result in multiple and diverse outcomes.

Getz[33] provides commentary on the liminal/liminoid zone when discussing the planned event experience.
He refers to a liminal zone at an event as the creation of "time out of time: a special place". He notes that
this liminal zone is both spatial and temporal and integral when planning a successful event (e.g. ceremony,
concert, conference etc.).[34]

In time
The temporal dimension of liminality can relate to moments (sudden events), periods (weeks, months, or
possibly years), and epochs (decades, generations, maybe even centuries).[6]

Examples
Twilight serves as a liminal time, between day and night—where one is "in the twilight zone, in a liminal
nether region of the night".[35] The title of the television fiction series The Twilight Zone makes reference to
this, describing it as "the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition" in
one variant of the original series' opening. The name is from an actual zone observable from space in the
place where daylight or shadow advances or retreats about the Earth. Noon and, more often, midnight can
be considered liminal, the first transitioning between morning and afternoon, the latter between days.

Within the years, liminal times include equinoxes when day and night have equal length, and solstices,
when the increase of day or night shifts over to its decrease. This "qualitative bounding of quantitatively
unbounded phenomena"[36] marks the cyclical changes of seasons throughout the year. Where the quarter
days are held to mark the change in seasons, they also are liminal times. New Year's Day, whatever its
connection or lack of one to the astrological sky, is a liminal time. Customs such as fortune-telling take
advantage of this liminal state. In a number of cultures, actions and events on the first day of the year can
determine the year, leading to such beliefs as first-foot. Many cultures regard it as a time especially prone to
hauntings by ghosts—liminal beings, neither alive nor dead.

In religion

Judeo-Christian worship
Liminal existence can be located in a separated sacred space, which
occupies a sacred time. Examples in the Bible include the dream of
Jacob (Genesis 28:12–19) where he encounters God between
heaven and earth and the instance when Isaiah meets the Lord in
the temple of holiness (Isaiah 6:1–6).[37] In such a liminal space, the
individual experiences the revelation of sacred knowledge where
God imparts his knowledge on the person.

Worship can be understood in this context as the church community

(or communitas or koinonia) enter into liminal space
corporately.[37] Religious symbols and music may aid in this
process described as a pilgrimage by way of prayer, song, or
liturgical acts. The congregation is transformed in the liminal space
and as they exit, are sent out back into the world to serve. A painting depicting Jacob's Ladder
to heaven

Judeo-Christian ministry
In Liminal Reality and Transformational Power,[38] Dr. Timothy Carson, curator of the Liminality
Project,[39] co-founder of the Guild for Engaged Liminality[40] with Lisa Withrow and Jonathan Best, and
co-founder The Liminality Press[41] with Lisa Withrow, explores the outer and inner aspects of liminality,
addressing the history of the discipline with mythological and psychological underpinnings, and an
application of the concepts to theology, Biblical hermeneutics, symbolism, and practical applications for
those engaged in religious leadership.

In Crossing Thresholds: A Practical Theology of Liminality,[42] Carson serves as co-author with Rosy
Fairhurst, Nigel Rooms, and Lisa Withrow, as they define the aspects of liminality vis-à-vis its practical
applications in religious life. The book includes a conceptual description of liminality as well as applications
for hermeneutics, liturgy, ecclesiology, leadership, learning, faith formation, and pastoral care and crisis.
In Leaning into the Liminal: A Guide for Counselors and Companions, [43] Carson utilizes a model
informed by liminality – The Rites of Passage process – as a pan-theoretical resource for counselors,
therapists, religious leaders, spiritual directors, and chaplains. It includes reflections on the role of the liminal
guide, as well as contributions by seven other authors who address a variety of therapeutic models, healing
the wounds of war, spiritual direction, and guiding through the end passages of life.

Of beings
Various minority groups can be considered liminal. In reality illegal immigrants (present but not "official"),
and stateless people, for example, are regarded as liminal because they are "betwixt and between home and
host, part of society, but sometimes never fully integrated".[6] Bisexual, intersex, and transgender people in
some contemporary societies, people of mixed ethnicity, and those accused but not yet judged guilty or not
guilty can also be considered to be liminal. Teenagers, being neither children nor adults, are liminal people:
indeed, "for young people, liminality of this kind has become a permanent phenomenon...Postmodern
liminality".[44]

The "trickster as the mythic projection of the magician—standing in the limen between the sacred realm and
the profane"[45] and related archetypes embody many such contradictions as do many popular culture
celebrities. The category could also hypothetically and in fiction include cyborgs, hybrids between two
species, shapeshifters. One could also consider seals, crabs, shorebirds, frogs, bats, dolphins/whales and
other "border animals" to be liminal: "the wild duck and swan are cases in point...intermediate creatures that
combine underwater activity and the bird flight with an intermediate, terrestrial life".[46] Shamans and
spiritual guides also serve as liminal beings, acting as "mediators between this and the other world; his
presence is betwixt and between the human and supernatural."[47] Many believe that shamans and spiritual
advisers were born into their fate, possessing a greater understanding of and connection to the natural
world, and thus they often live in the margins of society, existing in a liminal state between worlds and
outside of common society.[47]

In places
The spatial dimension of liminality can include specific places,
larger zones or areas, or entire countries and larger regions.[6]
Liminal places can range from borders and frontiers to no man's
lands and disputed territories, to crossroads to perhaps airports,
hotels, and bathrooms. Sociologist Eva Illouz argues that all
"romantic travel enacts the three stages that characterize liminality:
separation, marginalization, and reaggregation".[48]
A hotel room is a liminal place, being
In mythology and religion or esoteric lore liminality can include an area that is only slept in for
such realms as Purgatory or Da'at, which, as well as signifying transient purposes and for a limited
liminality, some theologians deny actually existing, making them, in duration.
some cases, doubly liminal. "Between-ness" defines these spaces.
For a hotel worker (an insider) or a person passing by with
disinterest (a total outsider), the hotel would have a very different connotation. To a traveller staying there,
the hotel would function as a liminal zone, just as "doors and windows and hallways and gates frame...the
definitively liminal condition".[49]
More conventionally, springs, caves, shores, rivers, volcanic calderas—"a huge crater of an extinct
volcano...[as] another symbol of transcendence"[50]—fords, passes, crossroads, bridges, and marshes are all
liminal: "'edges', borders or faultlines between the legitimate and the illegitimate".[51] Oedipus met his
father at the crossroads and killed him; the bluesman Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads, where
he is said to have sold his soul.[52]

In architecture, liminal spaces are defined as "the physical spaces between one destination and the next."[53]
Common examples of such spaces include hallways, airports, and streets.[54][55]

In contemporary culture viewing the nightclub experience (dancing in a nightclub) through the liminoid
framework highlights the "presence or absence of opportunities for social subversion, escape from social
structures, and exercising choice".[56] This allows "insights into what may be effectively improved in
hedonic spaces. Enhancing the consumer experience of these liminoid aspects may heighten experiential
feelings of escapism and play, thus encouraging the consumer to more freely consume".[56]

In folklore
There are a number of stories in folklore of those who could only
be killed in a liminal space: In Welsh mythology, Lleu could not be
killed during the day or night, nor indoors or outdoors, nor riding or
walking, nor clothed or naked (and is attacked at dusk, while
wrapped in a net with one foot on a cauldron and one on a goat).
Likewise, in Hindu text Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu appears in a
half-man half-lion form named Narasimha to destroy the demon
Hiranyakashipu who has obtained the power never to be killed in
day nor night, in the ground nor in the air, with weapon nor by bare
hands, in a building nor outside it, by man nor beast. Narasimha
kills Hiranyakashipu at dusk, across his lap, with his sharp claws,
on the threshold of the palace, and as Narasimha is a god himself,
the demon is killed by neither man nor beast. In the Mahabharata, Harihara—the fused representation of
Indra promises not to slay Namuci and Vritra with anything wet or Vishnu (Hari) and Shiva (Hara) from
dry, nor in the day or in the night, but instead kills them at dusk the Hindu tradition, existing in a
liminal state of being
with foam.[57]

The classic tale of Cupid and Psyche serves as an example of the

liminal in myth, exhibited through Psyche's character and the events she experiences. She is always
regarded as too beautiful to be human yet not quite a goddess, establishing her liminal existence.[58] Her
marriage to Death in Apuleius' version occupies two classic Van Gennep liminal rites: marriage and
death.[58] Psyche resides in the liminal space of no longer being a maiden yet not quite a wife, as well as
living between worlds. Beyond this, her transition to immortality to live with Cupid serves as a liminal rite
of passage in which she shifts from mortal to immortal, human to goddess; when Psyche drinks the
ambrosia and seals her fate, the rite is completed and the tale ends with a joyous wedding and the birth of
Cupid and Psyche's daughter.[58] The characters themselves exist in liminal spaces while experiencing
classic rites of passage that necessitate the crossing of thresholds into new realms of existence.

In ethnographic research
In ethnographic research, "the researcher is...in a liminal state, separated from his own culture yet not
incorporated into the host culture"[59]—when he or she is both participating in the culture and observing the
culture. The researcher must consider the self in relation to others and his or her positioning in the culture
being studied.

In many cases, greater participation in the group being studied can lead to increased access of cultural
information and greater in-group understanding of experiences within the culture. However increased
participation also blurs the role of the researcher in data collection and analysis. Often a researcher that
engages in fieldwork as a "participant" or "participant-observer" occupies a liminal state where he/she is a
part of the culture, but also separated from the culture as a researcher. This liminal state of being betwixt and
between is emotional and uncomfortable as the researcher uses self-reflexivity to interpret field observations
and interviews.

Some scholars argue that ethnographers are present in their research, occupying a liminal state, regardless of
their participant status. Justification for this position is that the researcher as a "human instrument" engages
with his/her observations in the process of recording and analyzing the data. A researcher, often
unconsciously, selects what to observe, how to record observations and how to interpret observations based
on personal reference points and experiences. For example, even in selecting what observations are
interesting to record, the researcher must interpret and value the data available. To explore the liminal state
of the researcher in relation to the culture, self-reflexivity and awareness are important tools to reveal
researcher bias and interpretation.

In higher education
For many students, the process of starting university can be seen as a liminal space.[60] Whilst many
students move away from home for the first time, they often do not break their links with home, seeing the
place of origin as home rather than the town where they are studying. Student orientation often includes
activities that act as a rite of passage, making the start of university as a significant period. This can be
reinforced by the split of town and gown, where local communities and the student body maintain different
traditions and codes of behaviour. This means that many university students are no longer seen as school
children, but have not yet achieved the status of independent adults. This creates an environment where
risk-taking is balanced with safe spaces that allow students to try out new identities and new ways of being
within a structure that provides meaning.[61]

In popular culture

Novels and short stories

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk makes use of liminality in explaining time
travel. Possession by A. S. Byatt describes how postmodern "Literary theory. Feminism...write about
liminality. Thresholds. Bastions. Fortresses".[62] Each book title in The Twilight Saga speaks of a liminal
period (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn). In The Phantom Tollbooth (1961), Milo enters
"The Lands Beyond", a liminal place (which explains its topsy-turvy nature), through a magical tollbooth.
When he finishes his quest, he returns, but changed, seeing the world differently. The giver of the tollbooth
is never seen and name never known, and hence, also remains liminal. Liminality is a major theme in
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, in which the characters live between sea and land on docked boats,
becoming liminal people. Saul Bellow's "varied uses of liminality...include his Dangling Man, suspended
between civilian life and the armed forces"[63] at "the onset of the dangling days".[64] In her short story
collection, Tales From the Liminal (2021 Deuxmers[65]), S. K. Kruse[66] explores the potential
transformative power of liminal times, places, and states of being.

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre follows the protagonist through different stages of life as she crosses the
threshold from student to teacher to woman.[67] Her existence throughout the novel takes a liminal
character. She can first be seen when she hides herself behind a large red curtain to read, closing herself off
physically and existing in a paracosmic realm. At Gateshead, Jane is noted to be set apart and on the outside
of the family, putting her in a liminal space in which she neither belongs nor is completely cast away.[68]
Jane's existence emerges as paradoxical as she transcends commonly accepted beliefs about what it means
to be a woman, orphan, child, victim, criminal, and pilgrim,[69] and she creates her own narrative as she is
torn from her past and denied a certain future.[69] Faced with a series of crises, Jane's circumstances
question social constructs and allow Jane to progress or to retract; this creates a narrative dynamic of
structure and liminality (as coined by Turner).[69]

Karen Brooks states that Australian grunge lit books, such as Clare Mendes' Drift Street, Edward Berridge's
The Lives of the Saints, and Andrew McGahan's Praise "...explor[e] the psychosocial and psychosexual
limitations of young sub/urban characters in relation to the imaginary and socially constructed boundaries
defining...self and other" and "opening up" new "liminal [boundary] spaces" where the concept of an abject
human body can be explored.[70] Brooks states that Berridge's short stories provide "...a variety of violent,
disaffected and often abject young people", characters who "...blur and often overturn" the boundaries
between suburban and urban space.[70] Brooks states that the marginalized characters in The Lives of the
Saints, Drift Street and Praise are able to stay in "shit creek" (an undesirable setting or situation) and
"diver[t]... flows" of these "creeks", thus claiming their rough settings' "liminality" (being in a border
situation or transitional setting) and their own "abjection" (having "abject bodies" with health problems,
disease, etc.) as "sites of symbolic empowerment and agency".[70]

Brooks states that the story "Caravan Park" in Berridge's short story collection is an example of a story with
a "liminal" setting, as it is set in a mobile home park; since mobile homes can be relocated, she states that
setting a story in a mobile home "...has the potential to disrupt a range of geo-physical and psycho-social
boundaries".[70] Brooks states that in Berridge's story "Bored Teenagers", the adolescents using a
community drop-in centre decide to destroy its equipment and defile the space by urinating in it, thus
"altering the dynamics of the place and the way" their bodies are perceived, with their destructive activities
being deemed by Brooks to indicate the community centre's "loss of authority" over the teens.[70]

In-Between: Liminal Stories is a collection of ten short stories and poems that exclusively focus on liminal
expressions of various themes like memory disorder, pandemic uncertainty, authoritarianism, virtual reality,
border disputes, old-age anxiety, environmental issues, and gender trouble. The stories, such as "In-
Between", "Cogito, Ergo Sum", "The Trap", "Monkey Bath", "DreamCatcher", "Escape to Nowhere", "A
Letter to My-Self", "No Man's Land", "Whither Am I?", and "Fe/Male",[71] apart from their thematic
relevance, directly and indirectly link the possibilities and potential of liminality in literature for developing
characters, plots, and settings. The experiences and expressions of the in-between states of living ‘betwixt
and between’ in a transitional world that intricately changes the constants and perpetuities of human life are
eminent in the stories that are associated with the theoretical concepts such as permanent and temporary
liminality, liminal space, liminal entity, liminoid, communitas, and anti-structure. The significance of
liminality in the short stories is emphasised by conceptualising the existence of the characters as "living not
here, not there – but somewhere in a space between here and there".[71]

Plays
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a play by Tom Stoppard, takes place both in a kind of no-man's-
land and the actual setting of Hamlet. "Shakespeare's play Hamlet is in several ways an essay in sustained
liminality ... only via a condition of complete liminality can Hamlet finally see the way forward".[72] In the
play Waiting for Godot for the entire length of the play, two men walk around restlessly on an empty stage.
They alternate between hope and hopelessness. At times one forgets what they are even waiting for, and the
other reminds him: "We are waiting for Godot". The identity of 'Godot' is never revealed, and perhaps the
men do not know Godot's identity. The men are trying to keep up their spirits as they wander the empty
stage, waiting.

Films and TV shows

The Twilight Zone (1959–2003) is a US television anthology series that explores unusual situations between
reality and the paranormal. The Terminal (2004), is a US film in which the main character (Viktor
Navorski) is trapped in a liminal space; since he can neither legally return to his home country Krakozhia
nor enter the United States, he must remain in the airport terminal indefinitely until he finds a way out at the
end of the film. In the film Waking Life, about dreams, Aklilu Gebrewold talks about liminality. Primer
(2004), is a US science fiction film by Shane Carruth where the main characters set up their time travelling
machine in a storage facility to ensure it will not be accidentally disturbed. The hallways of the storage
facility are eerily unchanging and impersonal, in a sense depicted as outside of time, and could be
considered a liminal space. When the main characters are inside the time travel box, they are clearly in
temporal liminality. Yet another example comes from Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke in which the
Forest Spirit can only be killed while switching between its two forms.

Photography and Internet culture

In the late 2010s, a trend of images depicting so-called "liminal spaces"
surged in online art and photography communities, with the intent to
convey "a sense of nostalgia, lostness, and uncertainty".[73] The subjects of
these photos may not necessarily fit within the usual definition of spatial
liminality (such as that of hallways, waiting areas or rest stops) but are
instead defined by a forlorn atmosphere and sentiments of abandonment,
decay and quietness. Additionally, it has been suggested that the liminal
space phenomenon could represent a broader feeling of disorientation in
modern society, explaining the usage of places that are common in
childhood memories (such as playgrounds or schools) as reflective about
the passage of time and the collective experience of growing older.[74]
A white hallway lit by
The phenomenon gained media attention in 2019, when a short creepypasta fluorescent lighting with an
originally posted to 4chan's /x/ board in 2019 went viral.[75] The exit sign, an example of a
creepypasta showed an image of a hallway with yellow carpets and “liminal space”
wallpaper, with a caption purporting that by "noclipping out of bounds in
real life", one may enter the Backrooms, an empty wasteland of corridors
with nothing but "the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise
of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of
randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in".[76] Since then, a popular subreddit titled "liminal
space", cataloguing photographs that give a "sense that something is not quite right",[77] has accrued over
500,000 followers.[78][79] A Twitter account called @SpaceLiminalBot posts many liminal space photos
and it has accrued over 1.2 million followers.[80] Liminal spaces can also be found in painting and drawing,
for example in paintings by Jeffery Smart.[81][82]

Research indicates that liminal spaces may appear eerie or strange because they fall into an uncanny valley
of architecture and physical places.[83]

Music and other media

The 2019 surrealist puzzle game Superliminal, developed by Pillow Castle Games, explicitly incorporates
liminality into its puzzles and level design.

Liminal Space is an album by American breakcore artist Xanopticon. Coil mention liminality throughout
their works, most explicitly with the title of their song "Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)" (sic) from their album
Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. 2. In .hack//Liminality Harald Hoerwick, the creator of the MMORPG
"The World", attempted to bring the real world into the online world, creating a hazy barrier between the
two worlds; a concept called "Liminality".

In the lyrics of French rock band Little Nemo's song "A Day Out of Time", the idea of liminality is
indirectly explored by describing a transitional moment before the returning of "the common worries". This
liminal moment is referred as timeless and, therefore, absent of aims and/or regrets.

Liminoid experiences
In 1974, Victor Turner coined the term liminoid (from the Greek word eidos, meaning "form or shape"[12])
to refer to experiences that have characteristics of liminal experiences but are optional and do not involve a
resolution of a personal crisis.[2] Unlike liminal events, liminoid experiences are conditional and do not
result in a change of status, but merely serve as transitional moments in time.[2] The liminal is part of
society, an aspect of social or religious rites, while the liminoid is a break from society, part of "play" or
"playing". With the rise in industrialization and the emergence of leisure as an acceptable form of play
separate from work, liminoid experiences have become much more common than liminal rites.[2] In these
modern societies, rites are diminished and "forged the concept of 'liminoid' rituals for analogous but secular
phenomena" such as attending rock concerts and other[84] liminoid experiences.

The fading of liminal stages in exchange for liminoid experiences is marked by the shift in culture from
tribal and agrarian to modern and industrial. In these societies, work and play are entirely separate whereas
in more archaic societies, they are nearly indistinguishable.[2] In the past play was interwoven with the
nature of work as symbolic gestures and rites in order to promote fertility, abundance, and the passage of
certain liminal phases; thus, work and play are inseparable and often dependent on social rites.[2] Examples
of this include Cherokee and Mayan riddles, trickster tales, sacred ball games, and joking relationships
which serve holy purposes of work in liminal situations while retaining the element of playfulness.[2]
Ritual and myth were, in the past, exclusively connected to collective work that served holy and often
symbolic purposes; liminal rites were held in the form of coming-of-age ceremonies, celebrations of
seasons, and more. Industrialization cut the cord between work and the sacred, putting "work" and "play"
in separate boxes that rarely, if ever, intersected.[2] In a famous essay regarding the shift from liminal to
liminoid in industrial society, Turner offers a twofold explanation of this sect. First, society began to move
away from activities concerning collective ritual obligations, placing more emphasis on the individual than
the community; this led to more choice in activities, with many such as work and leisure becoming optional.
Second, the work done to earn a living became entirely separate from his or her other activities so that it is
"no longer natural, but arbitrary."[2] In simpler terms, the industrial revolution brought about free time that
had not existed in past societies and created space for liminoid experiences to exist.[2]

Examples of liminoid experiences

Sports
Sporting events such as the Olympics, NFL football games, and hockey matches are forms of liminoid
experiences. They are optional activities of leisure that place both the spectator and the competitor in in-
between places outside of society's norms. Sporting events also create a sense of community among fans
and reinforces the collective spirit of those who take part.[19] Homecoming football games, gymnastics
meets, modern baseball games, and swim meets all qualify as liminoid and follow a seasonal schedule;
therefore, the flow of sports becomes cyclical and predictable, reinforcing the liminal qualities.[19]

Commercial flight
One scholar, Alexandra Murphy, has argued that airplane travel is inherently liminoid—suspended in the
sky, neither here nor there and crossing thresholds of time and space, it is difficult to make sense of the
experience of flying.[85] Murphy posits that flights shift our existence into a limbo space in which
movement becomes an accepted set of cultural performances aimed at convincing us that air travel is a
reflection of reality rather than a separation from it.[85]

See also
Androgyny – Having both male and female Limit situation
characteristics Locus amoenus – Literary topos involving
Bardo – Buddhist concept an idealized place of safety or comfort
Cognitive dissonance – Stress from Phase transition – Physical process of
contradictory beliefs transition between basic states of matter
Critical point (thermodynamics) – Transitioning (transgender) – Changing
Temperature and pressure point where gender presentation to accord with gender
phase boundaries disappear identity
Limbo – Theological concept Trance – Abnormal state of wakefulness or
Liminal being – Being that cannot be easily altered state of consciousness
placed into a single category of existence Entity – Something that exists in some
Liminal deity – Gods of boundaries or identified universe of discourse
transitions Intermediate state (disambiguation)

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External links
The dictionary definition of liminal at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of liminality at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of liminoid at Wiktionary

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