Liminal being
{{Short description|Being that cannot be easily placed into a single category of existence}}
Image:Palais Bourbon, Malerei in der Kuppel der Poesie, Szene- Erziehung des Achill (Eugène Delacroix).jpg, half man, half horse: instructing Achilles]]
Liminal beings are entities that cannot easily be placed into a single category of existence. The concept was developed by the cultural anthropologist Victor Turner. It is associated with the threshold state of liminality, from Latin līmen, "threshold"."liminal", Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online Oxforde 23, 2007.
Liminal entities
Turner considered that liminal entities, such as those undergoing initiation rites, often appeared in the form of monsters, so as to represent the co-presence of opposites—high/low; good/bad—in the liminal experience.{{cite book |first1=J. C. |last1=Alexander |first2=S. |last2=Seidman |title=Culture and Society |location=Cambridge |year=1990 |pages=147–9 |isbn=9780521359399 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fwKvaCpvyG8C&pg=PA147 }}
Liminal personas are structurally and socially invisible, having left one set of classifications and not yet entered another.{{cite book |first=Thomas |last=Quartier |title=Bridging the Gaps: An Empirical Study of Catholic Funeral Rites |publisher=LIT Verlag Münster |year=2007 |pages=103–4 |isbn=9783825807467 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8-Skuq5td6IC&pg=PA103 }} The social anthropologist Mary Douglas has highlighted the dangerous aspects of such liminal beings,{{cite book |first=Llynne |last=Hume |title=Portals: Opening Doorways to Other Realities Through the Senses |publisher=Berg |year=2007 |page=110 |isbn=9781845201456 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JWGtAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA110 }} but they are also potentially beneficent. Thus we often find presiding over a ritual's liminal stage a semi-human shaman figure, or a powerful mentor with animal aspects, such as a centaur.Aniela Jaffe and Joseph Henderson, in C. G. Jung ed., [https://books.google.com/books?id=g_10NtfzVe0C Man and his Symbols] (London 1968 p. 261-2 and p. 101
Legendary
By extension, liminal beings of a mixed, hybrid nature appear regularly in myth, legend and fantasy. A legendary liminal being is a legendary creature that combines two distinct states of simultaneous existence within one physical body. This unique perspective may provide the liminal being with wisdom and the ability to instruct, making them suitable mentors, whilst also making them dangerous and uncanny.
Many beings in fantasy and folklore exist in liminal states impossible in actual beings. One example is the sphinx: 'a liminal figure...straddling the divide between animal and human, and partaking of both'.{{cite book |first=Teresa de |last=Lauretis |title=Freud's Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film |location=Basingstoke |year=2008 |page=119 |isbn=9780230524781 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=TvoaAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA119 }}
See also
{{Columns-list|colwidth=30em|
- Abjection
- Anthropomorphism
- Donna Haraway
- Improvisation
- Lycanthropy
- Transitional object
- Trickster
- Virtual reality
}}
References
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Further reading
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20120911161341/http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/liminal.htm Allison Wright, 'liminal, liminality']
- [http://devdutt.com/articles/indian-mythology/liminal-beings.html Liminal beings: Indian mythology]
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