LIMINALITY

Liminality (from the Latin limes "limit" or "border") is when you are neither in one place (which can be physical or mental), nor in another. It is being on a threshold, between one thing that is gone and another that is yet to come. Illness, adolescence, sleeplessness or transitory insanity are liminal states, as are travel, whether for pleasure or necessity. There can also be liminal places, like an airport or a jail, and they can be personal or group events. The concept of liminality is a notion developed in the book "Rites of Passage", by Arnold Van Gennep, 1 taken later by Victor Turner, 2 and refers to the state of openness and ambiguity that characterizes the intermediate phase of a time- tripartite space (a preliminary or previous phase, an intermediate or liminal phase, and another postliminal or later phase). Liminality is directly related to communitas since it is an anti-structure and anti-hierarchy manifestation of society, that is, a situation where a generic communion between social subjects would go beyond the specificities of a stratification . It is, therefore, the moment where trivial distinctions are suspended.