A limen links the interior of a building to what lies outside it. It is also the connection between any one of its rooms and other areas of the building. It is thus a kind of necessary included middle marking the transition from one domain to another. We are often tempted to think that the boundary between truth and falsity must always be absolute, and thus that there is no possible bridge between the two; in other words, that it is the nature of any genuine truth to be completely contradicted by its denial. In Liminality in Questions of Truth: The Law of the Included Middle, Donald A. Crosby questions this idea, calling it a Law of the Excluded Middle and contending that, in many cases, there is a Law of the Included Middle that must be carefully considered and thoughtfully applied. Absolute, either/or truths are rare, and most claimed truths, when carefully examined, are imprecise, in need of further investigation, or no longer tenable in their present form. This is especially the case when the alleged truths relate to fundamental, wide-ranging issues of conviction, purpose, and value. Failing to ask the right questions can bar the way to more satisfactory answers. This book argues that searching for liminal bridges between opposing claims is an essential part of such questioning.

"The great Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar (1914-84) was immersed in one of the most vibrant and revolutionary intellectual scenes of the last century, the Paris of the 1950s and 60s. Yet his often highly cerebral work has never received the close philosophical attention it deserves. Moran's book fills this critical lacuna. Rather than indiscriminately applying 'theory' to Cortazar, it aims to show that his work both engages with and often foreshadows many of the problems which were to become central to so-called poststructuralist philosophy and poetics. This study demonstrates that Cortazar remains enduringly, problematically modern."

Liminal Fiction at the Edge of the Millennium: The Ends of Spanish Identity investigates the predominant perception of liminality—identity situated at a threshold, neither one thing nor another, but simultaneously both and neither—caused by encounters with otherness while negotiating identity in contemporary Spain. Examining how identity and alterity are parleyed through the cultural concerns of historical memory, gender roles, sex, religion, nationalism, and immigration, this study demonstrates how fictional representations of reality converge in a common structure wherein the end is not the end, but rather an edge, a liminal ground. On the border between two identities, the end materializes as an ephemeral limit that delineates and differentiates, yet also adjoins and approximates. In exploring the ends of Spanish fiction—both their structure and their intentionality—Liminal Fiction maps the edge as a constitutive component of narrative and identity in texts by Najat El Hachmi, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Javier Marías, Rosa Montero, and Manuel Rivas. In their representation of identity on the edge, these fictions enact and embody the liminal not as simply a transitional and transient mode but as the structuring principle of identification in contemporary Spain.

Grenzen, ihre Überschreitung, ihre Auflösung und ihre Wiederherstellung sind ein bisher nicht systematisch erforschtes Schlüsselkonzept für das Verständnis romantischer Literatur. Diese semiotisch-komparatistische Grundsatzstudie analysiert über drei Kulturräume hinweg vergleichend eine Vielfalt heterogener literarischer Entgrenzungsphänomene in der Romantik und entwickelt auf der Basis der romantischen Zeichentheorie ein Modell für die Analyse transepochaler Entgrenzungsphänomene. Dabei geht sie über bekannte Konzepte des paradoxen Subjekts hinaus, indem Entgrenzung als Interdependenz von Subjekt, Raum und Zeichen umfassend in detaillierten Lektüren literarischer Texte aus Deutschland, den USA und Großbritannien sowie in theoretischen Exkursen untersucht wird - von Novalis und Coleridge über Melville bis hin zu Deleuze und Guattari. Die Arbeit ist somit nicht nur ein Beitrag zur Romantikforschung, sondern lotet auch die methodologischen Möglichkeiten derselben neu aus. Die Studie wurde 2012 mit dem von der Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft der Freunde, Förderer und Ehemaligen der Freien Universität Berlin e.V. gestifteten Ernst-Reuter-Preis als herausragende und zukunftsweisende Promotionsarbeit ausgezeichnet. Boundaries constitute a key concept in Romanticism: their transgression, their elimination, but also their reconstruction. By analyzing the triad of sign, subject, and space, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of boundaries in German, English, and American Romanticism. Its trans-epochal approach reveals a shared dynamic of a multiplicity of heterogeneous boundary phenomena ranging from the late 18th century to postmodern Romantic texts and constructs a model for the examination of limits: a theory of a-limitation. The known concept of the transgressive Romantic subject is integrated into this triadic model whose primordial site of a-limitation, however, is the semiotics of Romanticism. With a creative theoretical design that allows the reader to survey readings of individual texts as well as broader theoretical frameworks, "Liminal Semiotics" offers a new perspective on a variety of literary texts and theories ranging from Novalis and Coleridge to Melville and finally to Deleuze and Guattari. The thesis was awarded the Ernst-Reuter-Prize 2012 for outstanding dissertations at Freie Universität Berlin.

The term liminal refers to a marginalized space of fertile chaos and creative potential where nothing is fixed or certain. Liminal performance is an emerging genre which has surfaced only in recent times and describes a range of interdisciplinary, highly experimental, performative works in theatre and performance, film and music-performances which can be seen to prioritize the body, the technological and the primordial. Broadhurst argues that traditional and contemporary critical and aesthetic theories are ultimately deficient in interpreting liminal performance. This revolutionary work first surveys traditional aesthetics in the writings of Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger and juxtaposes them with contemporary aesthetics in the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard and Lyotard. A series of case studies follows and, Broadhurst concludes with a summary description of liminal performances as an emerging genre. Works discussed in detail include: Pina Bausch's Tanztheater, the innovative Theatre of Images of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, the controversial social sculptures of the Viennese Actionists, Peter Greenaway's painterly aesthetics, Derek Jarman's queer politics, digitized sampled music, and neo-gothic sound.

Borders are essentially imaginary structures, but their effects are very real. This volume explores both geopolitical and conceptual borders through an interdisciplinary lens, bridging the disciplines of philosophy and literature. With contributions from scholars around the world, this collection closely examines the concepts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the paradoxical ambiguities inherent in these seemingly solid binary oppositions, while critiquing structures of power that produce and police these borders. As a political paradigm, liminality may be embraced by marginal subjects and communities, further blurring the boundaries between oppressive distinctions and categories.

Our world is bathed in ongoing biological, political, cultural, climate, and spiritual crises that seem endless. If anything, these disruptions appear to be spiraling into ever larger threat fronts that challenge our survival as a species. Carl Gustav Jung, renowned Swiss psychiatrist, avowed in his archetypal psychology that there is a portal of transforming possibility if we have the courage to enter that doorway. That threshold entering demands that we embrace our individual and collective sufferings and then seek the path of meaning and destiny that is always resident deeply at the core of such trauma. This book narrates how this destiny is found and lived forward for both each individual life and for our varied human cultures. It affirms and gives examples of the deep-soul dimension of life that lies under the often chaotic surface--the liminal realm of animate and guiding dream, vision, myth, and spirituality where the gods meet us so that we all can find our mutual way Home. This liminal world is navigated through the metaphoric and literalness of pilgrimage, performance, and political processes in our personal and cultural lives. What might be your path of destiny?

Embryo adoptions, stem cells capable of transforming into any cell in the human body, intra- and inter-species organ transplantation—these and other biomedical advances have unsettled ideas of what it means to be human, of when life begins and ends. In the first study to consider the cultural impact of the medical transformation of the entire human life span, Susan Merrill Squier argues that fiction—particularly science fiction—serves as a space where worries about ethically and socially charged scientific procedures are worked through. Indeed, she demonstrates that in many instances fiction has anticipated and paved the way for far-reaching biomedical changes. Squier uses the anthropological concept of liminality—the state of being on the threshold of change, no longer one thing yet not quite another—to explore how, from the early twentieth century forward, fiction and science together have altered not only the concept of the human being but the contours of human life. Drawing on archival materials of twentieth-century biology; little-known works of fiction and science fiction; and twentieth- and twenty-first century U.S. and U.K. government reports by the National Institutes of Health, the Parliamentary Advisory Group on the Ethics of Xenotransplantation, and the President’s Council on Bioethics, she examines a number of biomedical changes as each was portrayed by scientists, social scientists, and authors of fiction and poetry. Among the scientific developments she considers are the cultured cell, the hybrid embryo, the engineered intrauterine fetus, the child treated with human growth hormone, the process of organ transplantation, and the elderly person rejuvenated by hormone replacement therapy or other artificial means. Squier shows that in the midst of new phenomena such as these, literature helps us imagine new ways of living. It allows us to reflect on the possibilities and perils of our liminal lives.

This book analyses various forms of liminality and transgression in different geographies and demonstrates how and why various physical and symbolic boundaries create liminality and transgression. Its focus is on comprehending the ways in which these borders and boundaries generate liminality and transgression rather than viewing them solely as issues. It provides case studies from the past and present, allowing readers to connect subjects, periods, and geographies. It consists of theoretical and empirical chapters that demonstrate how borders and liminality are interconnected. The book also benefits from the power of several visual essays by artists to complete the theoretical and empirical chapters which demonstrate different forms of liminality without need of much words. The book will be of interest to researchers and students working in the fields of urban and rural studies, urban sociology, cities and communities, urban and regional planning, urban anthropology, political science, migration studies, human geography, cultural geography, urban anthropology, and visual arts.

Betwixt and Between Liminality and Marginality: Mind the Gap offers an interdisciplinary thinking on “the marginal” within society. Using the framework of Victor Turner’s earlier notions of liminality, the book both challenges Turner’s symbolic anthropology, and celebrates its continued influence across disciplines, and under new theoretical constraints. Liminality in its simplest forms provides language for meaningful approaches to articulate transition and change. It also represents complex social theories beyond Turner’s classical symbolic approach. While demonstrating the enduring relevance of Turner’s language for expressing transition, this volume keeps an eye toward the validity of critiques against him. It thus theorizes with Turner’s work while updating, even abandoning, some of his primary ideas, when applying it to contemporary social issues. A central focus of this volume is marginality. Turner recognized that marginals, like liminars, are betwixt and between; however, they lack assurance that their ambiguity will be resolved. This volume explores the dialogic relationship of space and agency, to recognize marginal groups and people, and inquire, without a harmonious resolution, what happens to the marginals? Have race, class, gender, and sexual orientation become the space for thinking about reintegration and communitas? Each chapter examines how marginal groups, or liminal spaces and ideas, destabilize, shape, and affect the dominant culture.