Gates As Boundaries

Chapter 11 Gates as Boundaries

1 Gates and Liminality

The concept of liminality was first introduced in the context of ritual by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep. van Gennep described rites of passage as having three stages: separation, limen (“threshold” in Latin), and aggregation.1 Those who undergo such a rite are removed from society and taken to a place of seclusion (separation) where they carry out a series of ritual ordeals, and then are reincorporated into their society with a new status (aggregation). The middle, liminal stage is thus a transitional period between the two others.2 V. Turner expanded upon the idea of liminality, describing the period as a fun- damentally “ambiguous” state, “betwixt and between” customary behavior and social structures.3 During a liminal state, the status quo is upended: one is re- quired to do things ordinarily considered taboo, and social status among the initiates is negated.4 It was also “a period of special and dangerous power, which had to be constrained and channeled to protect the social order.”5 In many rites of passage, initiates are thought to be shaped by deities or other higher powers in preparation for their new status,6 and the period in general is characterized by magico-religious properties, dangerous or polluting for those involved.7

1 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (trans. M.V. Vizedom and G.L. Caffee; Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1960), 74–86. 2 Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer- sity Press, 1967), 102. 3 Turner, Forest of Symbols, 96–97. 4 A. Barnard and J. Spencer, “Rites of Passage,” in Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropol- ogy (ed. A. Barnard and J. Spencer; 2nd ed.; Florence, KY: Routledge, 2009), 616. Further, the initiates have no status, their behavior is marked by passive submission, and they must obey those who initiate them, who represent the authority of tradition. In this state, they are a tabula rasa, “on which is inscribed the knowledge and wisdom of the group, in those respects that pertain to the new group status” (Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti- Structure [The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures; New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995], 103). The ordeal fosters communitas – a homogeneity and comraderie – among the initiates (Turner, Forest of Symbols, 99–100; Ritual Process, 95–97), which is paradoxically necessary to main- tain social structure (Turner, Ritual Process, 97). 5 Charles Lindholm, “Liminality,” in The Dictionary of Anthropology (ed. T. Barfield; Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 288. 6 Turner, Ritual Process, 106. 7 Turner, Forest of Symbols, 97; Ritual Process, 108–109; Lindholm, “Liminality,” 288.

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Danger lies in transitional states, simply because transition is neither one state nor the next, it is undefinable. The person who must pass from one to another is himself in danger and emanates danger to others. The danger is controlled by ritual which precisely separates him from his old status, segregates him for a time and then publicly declares his entry to his new status.8

Liminality is a property of space as much as of time;9 a liminal space is thus a location between two spheres of being which carries the same connotations of a liminal period described above. Since Turner’s influential treatment of liminality in 1967, the concept has been borrowed from the anthropology of ritual and reappropriated in many diverse fields – applied to everything from ocean beaches to management consulting to teacher preparation.10 This is to be expected, since virtually any object, time, or space may be understood as transitional between two other objects, times, or spaces.11 The more extended applications, however, usually involve something far milder than van Gennepian liminality, often implying little more than a transition of some sort between two phases.12

8 Douglas, Purity and Danger, 97. 9 Bjørn Thomassen, “The Uses and Meanings of Liminality,” International Journal of Anthro- pology 2/1 (2009): 15–16. 10 See (respectively) Robert Preston-Whyte, “The Beach as a Liminal Space,” in A Companion to Tourism (ed. A.A. Lew, C.M. Hall, and A.M. Williams; Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 349–359; Barbara Czarniawska and Carmelo Mazza, “Consulting as a Liminal Space,” Human Rela- tions 56 (2003): 267–290; Alison Cook-Sather, “Newly Betwixt and Between: Revising Lim- inality in the Context of a Teacher Preparation Program,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 37/2 (2006): 110–127. Compare also Thomassen, “The Uses and Meanings of Liminality,” 18–19. 11 As Thomassen puts it: “In Turner’s own words, liminality refers to any “betwixt and between” situation or object. It is evident that this understanding opens up space for possi- ble uses of the concept far beyond that which Turner himself had suggested. Speaking very broadly, liminality is applicable to both space and time. Single moments, longer pe- riods, or even whole epochs can be liminal. Liminal places can be specific thresholds; they can also be more extended areas, like “borderlands” or, arguably, whole countries, placed in important in-between positions between larger civilizations. Liminality can also be applied to both single individuals and to larger groups (cohorts or villages), or whole so- cieties, or maybe even civilizations” (“The Uses and Meanings of Liminality,” 15–16). Com- pare Lindholm, who says “one problem with liminality was deciding when a state was indeed liminal – the term, like the situation it described, tended to spread beyond defini- tional boundaries” (“Liminality,” 288). 12 Bjørn Thomassen, “Liminality,” in The Encyclopedia of Social Theory (ed. A. Harrington, B.L. Marshall, and H.-P. Müller; London: Routledge, 2006), 322–323; “The Uses and Meanings