Victor Turner - Liminal Rites de Passage
So as a fun class this semester I am taking a class on Fairy
tales from the modern language department. In the third week of class we were
talking about some of the Grimm’s fairy tales and discussing the motif of the
journey. Funny enough, one of the researchers that we talked about was Victor
Turner, who in some way seems to show up in pretty much every class that I
take. Seriously, that guy must be like crazy rich right now with everyone using
his studies. In his discussion of the rites of passage among the Ndembu in
Zambia, he coined the term “liminality”, which involves the entering of a
transitional stage that one has to go through in order to reflect on the morals
and values of society. While we applied liminality in the fairy tale class to
the main characters, typically children, who leave home in order to go on an
adventure before returning back to their normal life, I couldn’t help but relate
the talk on liminality back to our discussion on religious ritual. Through
ritual knowledge imparted through receiving the sacra during the liminal period
in these rituals, greater understanding can be achieved for the initiate. This
liminality acts as preparation for one’s new role in society for both the
children that are depicted in fairy tales, as well as for intitiates in
religious ceremonies.
No comments:
Post a Comment