liminality

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a concept developed by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep and elaborated by Victor Turner to describe the transitional middle phase of a rite of passage, during which initiates have left their previous social status behind but have not yet been incorporated into their new status; van Gennep's tripartite structure of rites of passage — separation, liminality, and reincorporation — identifies the liminal phase as a time of ambiguity, danger, creativity, and potential transformation in which normal social structures and hierarchies are suspended; Turner extended the concept to describe entire social periods of transition and to develop the related concept of communitas — the spontaneous, undifferentiated social bonding that often emerges among those sharing liminal experience; liminality has been adopted beyond anthropology to describe transitional states in psychology, architecture, politics, and cultural theory, wherever threshold experiences create heightened potential for change and transformation