Liminality refers to a state of in-betweenness, of standing on a threshold, of transition. I encounter it repeatedly in my study of ritual. The liminal stage of rites of passage, crisis or initiation is the undefined, transitory phase that one passes through on the way from one well-defined state to another. You enter boot camp a civilian, you exit a soldier; funerals help remove the dead from the world of the living; Jewish children exit the rite of passage a bar or bat mitvah (son or daughter of the commandment, responsible for following God’s laws).
There are liminal beings, people who don’t fit wholly in one category or stage or another:
- adolescents, who are neither fully child or adult;
- transgendered or androgynous persons, but also other gender-benders (gays, butch women or femme men, bisexuals, etc.);
- fraternity/sorority pledges, initiates to a religious order, recruits at boot camp;
- Wikipedia also mentions stateless people (Kurds and Palestinians) and cyborgs.
One characteristic of liminal beings is that they invoke fear and unease. Because they are undefined, unnamed, and stand outside of the norms of society, they have power. Consider the court jesters who could critique the nobility without fear of reprisal and the fear that many adults in our society have of teens.
I seem to be doomed to be stuck in transitory states: I’m bilingual, biracial and bicultural; I’m a feminist man; I shirk many of the norms of the middle-class capitalist suburbia that surrounds me, and I’m sure that many who know me wonder when I’m going to grow up; I’ve gone from being a Sunstone Mormon to a non-theist Quaker, and continue to straddle religion and atheism in a way that puzzles or frustrates both believers and unbelievers. I’m ever restless, never quite sure if I fit in except with other misfits, and sometimes vaguely aware of the disruptive power I wield.
What do you think? Do you find the concept of liminality helpful? Are you a liminal being?
10 responses so far ↓
1 pilgrimgirl // Mar 19, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I consider myself quite liminal, yet at the same time I’ve been thinking about how black & white I can be, too.
For example, most people wouldn’t feel the need to formally announce they were leaving Mormonism. They’d just slowly drift into inactivity after years of half-baked effort. Not me. Or you, John.
2 Johnny // Mar 20, 2007 at 4:06 am
Excellent Post!
I think the concept of liminality is extremely helpful to me. I have a strange relationship with it. I often find myself in ambigious positions, but I don’t quite feel comfortable there. There is a part of me which deeply desires to have a stable understanding of myself and the world, to be at peace. However, as soon as I start to become comfortable in any category, I begin to be restless. So, I wouldn’t consider myself a liminal being, but I can’t think of a category I would easily fit in, nor would I really want such a category.
3 Miko // Mar 20, 2007 at 7:44 am
I, too, don’t consider myself particularly liminal, although there are certainly times when I am. I find, though, that most definitions rarely find absoluteness in one being. So, however feminine someone is, how often have you met the platonic ideal of Female? Perhaps liminality is the state that everyone is constantly in, for better or worse, which is why it’s so difficult to deal with (most people would rather be able to define themselves than to not).
4 John // Mar 20, 2007 at 8:14 am
Miko, I think we should be careful to dismiss the concept of liminality (or water it down completely). I find applications for it constantly, especially in the study of ritual.
Take gender for example: for all of its problems, male/female is defined strongly enough that the binary is the norm. Applications don’t have a place for “other.” I’m not saying that this is how things should be. In-between (or neither or other) gendered states are considered exceptional, to the point that society has elaborate (even repressive) methods of dealing with infants who don’t fit its strict definitions.
Miko, I think that we see the world similarly, in all of its shades, spectra, and complexity, but I would argue that this is not typical of societies in general, and of mainstream America in particular, which is why rituals are used to help navigate those uncertain, dangerous liminal stages.
I’ll try to find some internet links–it might help the discussion if we’re referencing something more than my imperfect explanations.
5 Zach A // Mar 20, 2007 at 9:01 am
I do think it’s a helpful concept, and identify with it to some extent.
I think it’s even more helpful if we realize that something/one may be “liminal” because there actually are well-defined in-between stages (sorority pledges, stateless people), but other times simply because it doesn’t fit into the preconceived concepts that have been externally imposed onto a reality that in itself is more nuanced and graded.
Being a spiritual/religious atheist is good example of the latter, because it’s mostly just prejudice/preconceived ideas that make people assume that if you are against part of religion (e.g. the supernatural bits) you’re therefore against all of it. And I would say gender performance is another example…
6 nee // Mar 20, 2007 at 10:08 am
I tend to go with Miko’s line about it being a state that everyone is constantly in. Categories are useful for communicating general definitions. However, within those categories, everyone is in a state of flux.
7 Bored in Vernal // Mar 20, 2007 at 10:41 am
Maybe I’m liminal as regarding Mormonism, but I feel uncomfortable regarding it as transitional. Any Mormon in my ward, or anyone who knows me in “real life” would see me as perfectly conventional. But those who are acquainted with Bored in Vernal know differently. I don’t feel like I’m on my way out, though. I think I heard Dan Wotherspoon saying (or quoting) something at the last Sunstone about making liminality a more permanent state?? Do any of you think this is possible, or is liminality necessarily too much of a crisis, too fluid to sustain?
I’m probably simply a misfit, which is why I feel comfortable here.
8 Tammy Takahashi // Mar 20, 2007 at 2:08 pm
This is an interesting use of the word “liminal”. I looked it up, and it seems to be more “on the brink of something, but not quite there yet”.
I’m wondering, if perhaps you’re thinking of the idea of marginality? Not quite in something, but not out of it either. In flux.
In either case, I read your entry and was nodding my head. I find myself unable to identify myself with a group without saying, “but”.
9 Bonny // Mar 20, 2007 at 2:56 pm
After reading this, I definitely consider myself liminal in terms of my faith. I like how the Wikipedia article states that a characteristic of a liminal state is openness. It made me a wonder a little bit about the many reasons that being open to new/different things can cause such self disorientation.
I really like what Zach said about the fact that sometimes we are liminal just because we don’t fit into the “preconceived concepts that have been externally imposed”. With this in mind, it makes me question whether or not the disorientation caused by being liminal is sometimes more imposed by those on the outside than by one’s self.
To make this more personal, I feel pretty comfortable in a liminal state of faith in which I still consider myself a Christian, but kind of feel like I am experiencing a new openness to other ideas and other faith. Yet others are very uncomfortable with my willingness to step outside of something that is so well defined for them. Therefore where I prefer being liminal in this area (at the moment), I tend to feel self disorientation more because of the discomfort of those in my peer group, than because I myself and uncomfortable with ambiguity or lack of definition.
I don’t know is that makes a whole lots of sense, but I think liminal can be extremely positive and possibility quite comfortable.
10 Elise // Mar 20, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I’m a bit late to the discussion but have thoroughly enjoyed reading your responses.
I like the wikipedia bit about “Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new.”
Sounds like my general growing up experience.
I imagine I’ll go through cycles of liminality my whole life.
One of the hardest parts of turning away from my family’s religious traditions as a late-teenage, early-20s young woman was that I missed out on most of the ritualistic “exits” from liminal stages. The temple was the largest one - I always viewed the temple as my passage rites into adulthood. Marriage seemed to hold some kind of key to advance me to the next level of salvation/exaltation - it didn’t really have that meaning to me anymore, after I changed religiously. Going on a mission was another possible ritualistic exit from liminality I was no longer eligible for. It took me a while to begin to grasp other ways in which I was advancing from childhood to adulthood. But I was definitely disoriented and a little lost as to my next step in life when I abandoned those rituals.
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