If Arnold van Gennep had drawn the map of rites of passage, the British anthropologist Victor Turner chose to explore its central region: that "marginal" phase in which the subject is no longer what they were and not yet what they will become. From this work came two concepts that are now very famous, liminality and communitas.
Fieldwork among the Ndembu
Turner (1920-1983) was trained in the so-called Manchester school, led by Max Gluckman, and in the 1950s he carried out long research among the Ndembu of Northern Rhodesia, today's Zambia. He worked together with his wife Edith, who went on to study ritual for the rest of her life.
The Ndembu had a vast ritual repertoire: healing ceremonies, ancestor cults, the male initiation with circumcision called Mukanda, the female one called Nkang'a. Turner realised that to understand these rites it was not enough to describe their gestures: one had to understand the symbols, which in Ndembu culture carried several overlapping meanings. The tree with white latex, for example, referred at once to mother's milk, matrilineal descent and the unity of the group.
"Betwixt and between"
In 1964 Turner published an essay with an eloquent title, Betwixt and Between, later collected in the volume The Forest of Symbols (1967). In it he argued that the liminal period is not a mere interval but a condition with its own recurring features.
Those on the threshold tend to be:
- socially invisible: often hidden, painted, masked, isolated in the bush;
- stripped of property, rank, clothing and sometimes their name;
- treated ambiguously: likened to a dead person, an embryo, a sexless being;
- submissive to their instructors, obedient, silent;
- taught through symbols, stories and sacred objects shown only at that moment.
The neophyte, Turner wrote, is like a tablet on which the community inscribes the knowledge of the new state.
Structure and anti-structure
In 1969 came The Ritual Process, the book that brought Turner international fame. Here he contrasted two ways of being together. Structure is ordinary society, made of roles, hierarchies, rights and duties. Communitas is the direct, egalitarian and spontaneous bond that arises among people suspended outside structure.
During initiation, young Ndembu shared hardship, privation and secrets; differences of family and prestige were cancelled. That comradeship, Turner observed, often lasted a lifetime.
An episode described in the book makes the idea clear. In the installation of an Ndembu chief, the candidate was made to sit humbly in a hut and was subjected to rebukes and insults from the people, who reminded him of his duties. Before receiving power, he had to experience the condition of one who has none.
Liminal and liminoid
In the 1970s Turner, who had moved to the United States, widened his gaze to industrial societies. He introduced the term liminoid for experiences that resemble liminality but are voluntary and individual: theatre, carnival, certain art forms, leisure. In traditional societies the threshold is compulsory and collective; in modern societies it is chosen and often consumed.
With Edith Turner he also studied Christian pilgrimage, interpreting it as a form of liminality lived by adults in a context of personal freedom.
A reading for initiatory schools
Turner's concepts are valuable for anyone studying the history of fraternities and initiatory societies. Many ritual elements become clear:
| Ritual element | Liminal reading |
|---|---|
| Blindfold | Suspension of ordinary sight |
| Removal of metals or clothing | Loss of previous rank |
| Path in darkness | Crossing of the threshold |
| Brotherhood among equals | Experience of communitas |
This is not about reducing every tradition to a scheme, but about recognising a shared human language that the various schools have expressed according to their own doctrine.
Limits and criticisms
Some scholars have reproached Turner for a certain tendency to generalise, or to idealise communitas as an always positive experience. Others have noted that not all cultures live the threshold in terms of equality. These are useful criticisms: they remind us that liminality is an interpretive key, not a law of nature.
In short
- Victor Turner developed van Gennep's marginal phase, starting from research among the Ndembu of Zambia.
- Liminality is a state of suspension with recurring traits: stripping, invisibility, ambiguity, symbolic instruction.
- Communitas is the egalitarian bond that arises among those who cross the threshold together.
- The term liminoid describes the voluntary experiences of modern society.
- His ideas help to read many gestures of Western initiatory rituals.
