Trajectories of the notion of liminality: Identity, border, threshold, affectivity and spatio-temporal processes of transformation

Liminality is a theoretical and methodological concept which originated within anthropology at beginning of the 20th century through the work of Arnold van Gennep and later Victor Turner. This notion emphasizes the need for a transformative space-time in the human experience and for a temporary suspension of the normative borders that orient it. Through ritualized symbolic forms, the individual can experience an “in-between” condition and question one’s own identity and role in the community of belonging, introducing new balances between innovation and preservation. The notion of liminality - from a processual point of view - allows us to explore a twofold paradoxical tension that can never be fully resolved in the human psyche: the relationship between identity and sociality (the paradox of psychic and collective life) and the relationship between stability and change (the paradox of transformation). Through the examination of historical contributions on liminality up to the most recent studies on contemporary psychosocial forms, the value of liminality is explored focusing on some of its central aspects: identity, community, rituality, passages and thresholds, borders and limits, creativity and transformation, uncertainty and affectivity, stability and loss of orientation.