“Allowing Liminality”

In anthropologyliminality (from Latinlīmen ‘a threshold’)[1] is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.[2] During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold”[3] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes).  See Wikipedia for more.

(Contributed by Zoë Robinson, H.W., M.)

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