Liminality and the Search for Boundaries

1 2 3 4 Introduction 5 6 7 Liminality and the 8 Search for Boundaries 9 10 11 Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra 12 13 14 15 16 17 his book concerns comparative applications of the concept of limin- 18 Tality within the social and political sciences. Liminality is a power- 19 ful tool of analysis that can be used to explore diff erent problems at the 20 intersection of anthropology and political studies. Social scientists are 21 increasingly sensitive to concepts that advance their ethnographic and 22 historical investigations. Liminality is such a concept—a prism through 23 which to understand transformations in the contemporary world. The ob- 24 jective of this volume is twofold: to explore the methodological range and 25 fertility of an anthropological concept, and to systematically apply this 26 concept to various concrete cases of transformation in social and political 27 environments. 28 This book illustrates the formative and transformative signifi cance of 29 liminality, presenting some of the most important liminal crises in history, 30 society, and politics. In an ever more interdependent world, globalizing 31 tendencies entail more uniformity and identity within societies and across 32 civilizations. Conversely, the uncertainties created by globalization pro- 33 cesses have triggered new divisions and antagonisms. In some cases they 34 spur desperate att empts to recover old certainties; in others, they create 35 new diff erences. The guiding paradigms of most political and sociological 36 research into these complex processes have been systemic, structural, or 37 normative in nature. Policy makers, public intellectuals, and academics 38 have att empted to “control” or channel crises such as civil wars, terrorist 39 40 41 42 HHorvathorvath 11stst ppages.inddages.indd 1 33/3/2015/3/2015 110:39:550:39:55 AAMM 2 Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra 1 threats, nationalist mobilizations, ethnic cleansing, and economic down- 2 turns along the lines of rationalizing and modernizing discourses. But 3 these formal, institutional, legalistic approaches are quite limited because 4 they bypass people’s need to make sense of voids of meaning and chal- 5 lenges to their cultural environment. 6 The escalation of crises demands a new mode of theorizing of the pres- 7 ent. It must provide tools for understanding the combination of cogni- 8 tive, aff ective, emotional, and “irrational” dimensions of crisis situations. 9 Whereas contemporary social sciences take the dichotomy between order 10 and disorder for granted, this volume problematizes the emergence and 11 crisis of political forms as historically concrete phenomena. A key theme 12 here is dissolutions of order, where experience shapes political conscious- 13 ness, interpretive judgments, and meaning formation. This book focuses 14 on the ways in which liminal situations can facilitate understanding of 15 the technologies used to shape identities and institutions. What happens 16 when ignoring the irrationality implicit in liminality makes the techno- 17 logical reconstruction of irrational fragments the very principle of ratio- 18 nality? This book’s primary aim is to suggest that seemingly irrational 19 conditions of liminality have logics of their own. Its chapters propose 20 various approaches by which to grasp the technologies and tools that can 21 perpetuate liminal moments into “normal” structures. 22 The two opening chapters by Arpad Szakolczai and Bjørn Thomassen 23 reconstruct and further discuss the concept of liminality. It was devel- 24 oped in social anthropology, fi rst by Arnold van Gennep and later via the 25 works of Victor Turner, as part of the then emerging “process approach.” 26 Originally referring to the ubiquitous rites of passage as a category of cul- 27 tural experience, liminality captures in-between situations and conditions 28 characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of 29 hierarchies, and uncertainty about the continuity of tradition and future 30 outcomes. Though this book therefore engages an anthropological con- 31 cept, it does not try to stay within any singular discipline—quite the con- 32 trary, this book is an interdisciplinary and theoretically innovative contri- 33 bution to social science thinking about boundaries and the liminal spaces 34 between them. The central idea of the book is that liminal conditions of ir- 35 rationality are situations to be studied in their own right. Lived experience 36 transforms human beings—and the larger social circles in which they par- 37 take—cognitively, emotionally, and morally, and therefore signifi cantly 38 contributes to the transmission of ideas and formation of structures. 39 This book intends to gauge cultural dimensions in contemporary so- 40 ciopolitical processes, especially through the prism of sudden irruptions 41 of existential crisis in people’s lives, loss of meaning, ambivalence, and 42 HHorvathorvath 11stst ppages.inddages.indd 2 33/3/2015/3/2015 110:39:550:39:55 AAMM Introduction 3 disorientation. As a fundamental human experience, liminality transmits 1 cultural practices, codes, rituals, and meanings in-between aggregate struc- 2 tures and uncertain outcomes. As a methodological tool it is well placed to 3 overcome disciplinary boundaries, which often direct att ention to specifi c 4 structures or sectors of society. Its capacity to provide explanatory and 5 interpretative accounts of seemingly unstructured situations provides 6 opportunity to link experience-based and culture-oriented approaches to 7 contemporary political problems, and to undertake comparisons across 8 historical periods. From a perspective of liminality, the cultural dimension 9 of human experience is not an obstacle to a more rational and organized 10 world but could be creative in transforming the social world. 11 This discussion has general relevance far beyond the specifi c sett ing; 12 indeed, a salient theme in each chapter of this book concerns exactly the 13 modalities through which liminal situations under given conditions tend 14 to perpetuate themselves, replacing by some magical act or alchemic trick- 15 ery (as Horvath discusses it) the very notion of “normality” or “reality” 16 with a fi ctive “unreal” state, temptingly inviting people into what Turner 17 often talked about as “life in the conditional.” In this vein, many chapters 18 directly or indirectly take up Arpad Szakolczai’s famous diagnosis of mo- 19 dernity as “permanent liminality.” The diffi culty of closing a revolution- 20 ary period is also an on-the-spot analytical refl ection of what is happening 21 in several Arab and Middle East states right now. Those conditions will 22 change, probably before these lines go into print, but analysis of such rev- 23 olutionary moments will doubtless retain its signifi cance for time to come. 24 A note about this book’s coming into being is in order. Marking the 25 100th anniversary of the publication of Arnold van Gennep’s Rites de Pas- 26 sage in 1909, the then newly founded journal International Political Anthro- 27 pology produced a special issue on “Liminality and Cultures of Change” 28 (issue 2, volume 1, 2009). Since its publication, that special issue has had 29 quite a remarkable readership and has certainly contributed to cross- 30 disciplinary discussions of liminality during the last fi ve years. We would 31 like to acknowledge the support of the Centre for Research in the Arts, So- 32 cial Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge 33 in preparing and coordinating scholarly contributions on this theme of 34 liminality. 35 Now we wish to carry forward the eff ort behind the special issue by 36 turning it into the present book, once again situating our contributions 37 with respect to these ongoing and unfolding debates across the social, cul- 38 tural, and political sciences. Eight of the chapters off ered here are elabo- 39 rated, updated versions of the original articles in the special issue. Four 40 chapters are new contributions, included because they identify crucial 41 42 HHorvathorvath 11stst ppages.inddages.indd 3 33/3/2015/3/2015 110:39:550:39:55 AAMM 4 Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra 1 dimensions of the liminal that speak to our present age and are also, for ob- 2 vious reasons, becoming core issues within current academic discussions. 3 The introductory section with chapters by Arpad Szakolczai and Bjørn 4 Thomassen outlines the analytical dimensions involved in “thinking with 5 liminality.” These two chapters also position the concept of liminality 6 within the social sciences with regard to both its almost forgott en intel- 7 lectual history and its contemporary analytical paradigms and positions. 8 The following two thematic sections engage respectively with social and 9 political dimensions of liminality. 10 The section “Liminality and the Social” deals with liminality’s applica- 11 bility for social processes. This section thematizes “inbetweenness,” criti- 12 cal and fl uid junctures, the performative elements of culture and power, 13 and the cultural signifi cance of territorial expansion. Bernd Giesen’s chap- 14 ter “Inbetweenness and Ambivalence” argues that spaces of ambivalence 15 and hybridity are fundamental to sustaining social reality. It suggests that 16 between structuralist and post-structuralist thought lies a third possibil- 17 ity: the space between the opposites, the transition between inside and 18 outside, the “neither . nor” or the “as well as . .”. Cultural sociology 19 focuses on something transcending the successful ordering and splitt ing 20 the world into neat binaries—namely, an inbetweenness that, it maintains, 21 is essential for the construction of culture. Reality itself provides no fi rm 22 ground for neat classifi cation, so in applying classifi cations to raw real- 23 ity there will always be an unclassifi able remainder. In specifying mean- 24 ing there is no way to achieve absolute clarity while avoiding a rest of 25 fuzziness.

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