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Liminality is a state of transition or being in-between, originally studied in cultural rituals by Arnold van Gennep and developed by Victor Turner. It can apply to various circumstances, including people, physics, and storytelling. Examples include refugees, Schrödinger’s cat, and characters in fiction.
Liminality is a term used to identify a person or place considered to be intermediate or in a state of transition. The Latin root, līmen, is considered to mean “a threshold”, or a point between two possible states in a process or existence. In some cases, the term liminal is used as an adjective to describe this state.
Originally, the idea of liminality arose from the studies and publication of French folklorist Arnold van Gennep. In 1909 he published a work known as Rites de Passage, where he coined the term. Later, a British anthropologist named Victor Turner developed the idea further in his book, The Forest of Symbols.
These authors’ early understanding of liminality revolved around cultural rituals, which can be broken down into a three-step process. In the first stage, an individual was separated from what was known to him, such as a boy being sent to the forest. Then begins the liminal stage, in which the boy stands in the doorway and faces a transformation, which may involve a task such as completing a hunt alone to prove his manhood. The last is the re-entry into society, where he has crossed over from liminality and crossed over to be accepted again into his own community.
As a concept, liminality can be applied to encompass many circumstances and studies including people, physics or even metaphysics and range from small to quite large. With respect to time, for example, the concept can apply to numerous natural events, such as the equinoxes and solstices that occur every year, or the transitions from night to day. Refugees, or other people with immigrant status, can be considered liminal, where during their transitional state they have no country to which they belong. Schrödinger’s cat can be viewed as a liminal being, in that it is perceived to maintain an indefinite threshold state until it is observed and its condition is known.
There is a great liminality in storytelling forms as well as in numerous works of literature and other media. One can find poets using a good deal of liminal imagery to invoke an emotional response with a flower bud, a moment of twilight, and so on. In fiction, liminality is used to create creatures and people that exist marginally, such as vampires, werewolves, or centaurs. Characters often fall into liminal storylines where they either come of age or go from being single and lonely to finding love and marriage. Some stories also use liminal settings that form a sort of purgatory for a character in which he awaits judgment or makes some discovery about her condition.
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