Wandering concepts. Liminality, or between cultural anthropology, performance studies and art

Abstract

The article discusses the concept of liminality, which the author understands to have migrated over the last hundred years from the science of folklore, which was originally folkloristics, to ethnology, cultural anthropology, performance studies and art criticism. This migration began in 1909 with the first edition of Arnold van Gennep’s book Rites of Passage. The concept embedded in the study of popular culture was revisited in the second half of the 20th century by Victor Turner, redefining it in the face of new cultural phenomena. The term thus modernised was then appropriated by the dynamically developing performatics of the new millennium. This process has been described by Jon McKenzie. In contrast, artists and cultural scholars in recent times have used the term in a variety of ways, from its ordinariness associated with the word threshold (Maria Stangret-Kantor), to a catch-all term used to describe the crises, the transformations in art perceived by art critics at the end of the 20th century (Stuart Morgan). The conclusion of the article suggests that the concept of liminality will continue to migrate and to redefine itself in the face of new methodologies and phenomena occurring in science and in art.