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

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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

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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

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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. 26 The chapter by Agnes Horvath proposes a genealogy of alchemy, fo- 27 cusing on the conditions conducive to artifi cial creation and the practices 28 applied in such a craft. It argues that technology can be analyzed as the 29 proposition, and att empted realization, of a genuinely alchemically trans- 30 formative operation of gaining a new identity, whether in personal, social, 31 or political being. From the perspective of rites of passage and liminality, 32 together with Plato’s ideas on imitation and image-making, the essay fo- 33 cuses on the situation when a self-styled outsider, the “Trickster,” brings 34 forth this identity change, hijacking the diff erence-making process. 35 Michel Dobry’s chapter questions the commonly accepted view that 36 critical events like revolutions and political transitions can or should be 37 approached with a specifi c set of extraordinary methodological and theo- 38 retical tools. Approaches leaning on such a “methodological exceptional- 39 ism” often assign a whole diff erent set of values to subjective “choices” 40 made by single individuals in critical historical situations, as compared to 41 “normal” politics, where objective structures tend to be in place. Standard 42

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approaches to critical events also tend to reconstruct a historical path of 1 such events, leading up to the already known outcome. As an alternative, 2 this chapter presents a “hypothesis of continuity” to account for political 3 crises or transitions from a position of “fl uid conjunctures.” Dobry’s main 4 proposition is not to provide a phenomenological account of the emotions 5 and aspirations active in such liminal moments, but rather to normalize 6 fl uid conjunctures with a view to making their study accessible with so- 7 cial scientifi c tools. Nevertheless, its stress on fl uidity of structures or the 8 “desectorization of social space” illustrates elective affi nities with social 9 liminality. 10 Stephen Mennell reexamines the westward expansion of the United 11 States in the nineteenth century, and the central place the frontier often 12 takes in the American national experience, in the light of the concept of 13 liminality. He tentatively draws connections between liminality, stem- 14 ming especially from the work of van Gennep and Turner, and the famous 15 “frontier thesis” of another Turner, Frederick Jackson Turner. A further el- 16 ement in the discussion is the idea of decivilizing processes, derived from 17 the writings of Norbert Elias. In conclusion, it argues that the frontier, 18 whether as actual liminal experience or as myth, has had lasting conse- 19 quences for the American habitus and for the United States’ position in 20 the world. 21 Peter Burke’s piece stresses the theatrical aspects of identity construc- 22 tion in politics by looking at reconstruction of the everyday life of King 23 Louis XIV at the court of Versailles. Using Erving Goff man’s ideas about 24 the presentation of the self in everyday life, this chapter sheds light on the 25 king’s rapid passages between diff erent royal roles, identities, and styles 26 of performance. This historical anthropology of daily rituals and everyday 27 performances at the margins of the private and the public off ers insight 28 into how a rather small man could become an emblematic political leader, 29 Louis le Grand. 30 The fi nal section concerns liminality’s more strictly political dimen- 31 sions. The contributions focus on various thematic and substantial issues, 32 highlighting the need to examine seemingly chaotic processes of socially 33 intense political transformations in terms of liminality. The chapters the- 34 matize revolutionary processes, the liminal sources of the democratic 35 imagination, the challenges of the “cold peace” after the Soviet collapse, 36 and the ways that liminality could become a leading paradigm in a sub- 37 discipline like international relations. Since the special issue appeared in 38 2009, the world has witnessed a series of revolutions in the “Arab World” 39 that have shatt ered regimes and broken down existing institutions, pav- 40 ing the way for novelty and radical change. As both Camil Roman and 41 42

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1 Mark Peterson argue, political revolutions must be seen as quintessential 2 outbreaks of liminal conditions in a large-scale sett ing entailing genuine 3 collapse of order and loss of stable reference points. 4 Roman’s chapter focuses on the role of the execution of King Louis XVI 5 during the French Revolution. Though the French revolution is usually 6 seen as overcoming the divine right of kings, the actual execution of the 7 king, the regicide, was not simply an ephemeral event but the centerpiece, 8 the apex of two congruent social processes: the symbolic disincorporation 9 of royal power and the consolidation of a new democratic community of 10 experience. Roman’s chapter provides a liminal analysis of the king’s trial 11 and execution as well as the creative emotional power emanating from 12 this event. 13 Mark Peterson carries forward the analysis of revolutions as liminal 14 experience, delving into the detailed, intricate social drama that the 15 Egyptian revolution was and still is. One of Peterson’s crucial points con- 16 cerns the diffi culty of “closing” the revolutionary period via some form 17 of ritual reintegration and returning to normality and a certain degree of 18 taken-for-grantedness. 19 Harald Wydra’s chapter takes the question of the authority vacuum in 20 a revolutionary situation a step further. It conceives of democracy as be- 21 ing in dialogue with a condition in which the place of power is empty. In 22 other words, democracy is based on a permanent authority vacuum that, 23 in turn, requires a sacred center of authority to transcend such fractures. 24 Modern democracy has developed bounded spaces—such as territorial 25 states, constitutionalism, or civic collective identity—that check the per- 26 manent uncertainty about the place of power. Such bounded spaces and 27 meanings are challenged by the dynamics of political emancipation of in- 28 dividuals and collective groups, which underlies realization of goals of 29 equality and freedom. Contrary to standpoints where democracy is the 30 order of egoism or is an ever stronger appeal to achieve more equality in 31 a global world, this chapter suggests that the democratic imagination is 32 based on the passionate interests in the liminal empty place of power. 33 Richard Sakwa refl ects upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end 34 of the Cold War, and the incapacity to achieve more enduring structures 35 of international peace. He argues that the demise of the Soviet brand of 36 emancipatory revolutionism exhausted the great utopian projects for 37 large-scale social amelioration. The new era, though characterized by an 38 unprecedented openness—a type of liminality of political options desig- 39 nated by the term krizis—of historical outcomes, is accompanied by politi- 40 cal closure throughout the developed world. Although the lack of political 41 imagination imbues this period with potential for novel types of renewal, 42

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the agendas of the past have not yet been adequately assessed. In particu- 1 lar, the asymmetrical fi nish of the Cold War, in which one side claims a 2 victory that the other side sees as a common achievement, generates ten- 3 sions in the form of “cold peace” that are taking traditional geopolitical 4 forms. Thus, even though liminality is defi ned as a period of transition 5 from one condition to another, the world today is unable to take advan- 6 tage of the unique historical situation at the end of the Cold War and risks 7 not only perpetuating its structures but also returning the world to a con- 8 dition of war of all against all, including through consolidation of elite- 9 driven national politics. 10 Maria Mälksoo’s chapter, covering the analytical challenge liminal- 11 ity poses to the discipline of international relations, crucially opens the 12 discussion of liminality to the larger fi eld of international politics. This 13 addition is both a meaningful and consequential, as we are indeed wit- 14 nessing a constant “permanentization” of warfare and security threats, 15 with “war”—a large-scale liminal experience par excellence—being ev- 16 erywhere and anywhere, all the time. 17 18 19 Into the Liminal and Out Again 20 21 Some fi nal words of caution and guidance: Our title refers to the notion of 22 “breaking boundaries.” Liminality indeed refers to threshold and bound- 23 ary experiences. Yet we expressly do not argue that “breaking boundar- 24 ies” is inherently “good” and necessary with respect to either empirical 25 phenomena or epistemology and the premises by which scholars should 26 pursue understanding and refl ection. In fact, a guiding theme in many of 27 the chapters here concerns the problematic att itude or “ethos” so bound 28 up with modernity, namely, that boundary transgressing is a necessary, 29 celebrated aspect of any kind of progress. Precisely this att itude should be 30 questioned and problematized—which also means insisting on the impor- 31 tance of boundaries and limits. 32 This insistence on limits operates in a very concrete dimension. Today 33 the concept of liminality is used in such diverse fi elds as confl ict studies, 34 international relations, literature, business studies, consultancy, psychia- 35 try, education, theater, leisure, arts, and popular culture. We do not want 36 this book to appropriate or delimit the ways in which this concept can 37 or should be employed in analysis. However, we do wish to signal that 38 any meaningful application of liminality needs to pay due att ention to 39 the anthropological and experiential underpinning of the term, and that 40 liminality—despite its communitarian and antistructural appeal—simply 41 42

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1 cannot be used “freely,” without invoking necessary discriminations and 2 analytical-cum-ethical discernments to ground our arguments. Put briefl y, 3 this book does not celebrate liminality but instead problematizes the many 4 ways in which liminal conditions have come to shape the contemporary. 5 Finally, the twelve chapters of this book do not represent any specifi c 6 “theoretical paradigm” or -ism, nor do they pretend to. Liminality is not 7 a concept that can or will produce “schools of thought.” The authors rep- 8 resent an array of diff erent disciplines including anthropology, sociology, 9 political science, history, and international relations. What unifi es this vol- 10 ume is a shared engagement with the concept of liminality, and a belief 11 that this concept is indeed central to the social and human sciences, a vital 12 tool for analysis still open to exploration and debate, and still more impor- 13 tant for understanding the times in which we all live. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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