Liminality

The concept of liminality was coined by the anthropologist Victor Turner and describes the emerging state in which individuals or groups are, after they have been ritually separated from the prevailing social order. Turner distinguishes recourse to Arnold van Gennep's Rites de Passage in the rites of passage three phases: separation, the thresholds and the Angliederungsphase. Liminality is located in the second phase, the threshold condition. Examples are the initiation rites of archaic societies or revolutions industrialized and modern societies. During the liminal phase, the individuals are in an ambiguous state. The classification system of ( everyday ) social structure is repealed. The individuals have no properties of their previous state nor what the future - they are " betwixt and between".

In the case of the classic rite of passage pedestrians are no longer children, but also no adults during the liminal phase. In Western cultures, where often no more powerful initiation rites of this kind exist anymore, to adolescents can in puberty and adolescence temporarily repeatedly experience caught as in a liminal phase ( Coming of age ), as well as young adults in the transitional period after graduation (so-called academic precarity ). Unlike traditional initiation rites, the subject is usually a certain amount of secrecy, these transitional periods are heavily discussed in the Modern in popular media and publicly discussed (eg in the Bildungsroman, coming-of- age film ).