Ritual, Symbol, and Liminality
Key terms and concepts from van Gennep's rites of passage and Turner's theory of liminality and communitas.
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Questions Covered in This Set
11 cards to master
What are van Gennep's three phases of a rite of passage?
Separation (préliminaire), liminality (liminaire), and reaggregation/incorporation (postliminaire).
What does 'liminality' literally derive from?
Latin *limen*, meaning 'threshold' — the initiate is 'betwixt and between' statuses.
What happens in the separation phase?
The initiate is symbolically detached from their old status: hair shaved, clothes removed, taken from the village, renamed, or declared 'dead' to their former self.
What does Turner mean by 'anti-structure'?
Liminality is not just a gap but a productive zone where normal social structure, hierarchy, and rules are suspended or reversed.
Define communitas.
An intense, unstructured solidarity among co-initiates — an experience of undifferentiated humanity contrasting with everyday hierarchy.
Name Turner's three types of communitas.
Spontaneous (protest, pilgrimage, blackout), normative (organized, e.g. monastic order), and ideological (utopian blueprints).
What is the 'liminoid'?
Optional, leisure-like liminality in industrial societies — festivals, theatre, art, backpacking — chosen rather than obligatory and rarely changing legal status.
What recurring features did Turner find in liminality?
Symbolic death and rebirth, leveling and humility, sacred instruction (revealing *sacra*), and communitas.
What is the Ndembu *mudyi* (milk tree) and why does it matter?
A tree with white latex condensing meanings of breast milk, matriliny, and nurturance — Turner's example of a multivocal dominant symbol.
Why did van Gennep call the pattern 'fractal'?
Because it applies at many scales: spatial passages (borders, doorways), temporal ones (New Year, harvest), and life-crisis rites.
How does a university graduation fit the model?
Separation (holding room, no longer a student), liminality (gown, hood, Latin, alphabetical queue), incorporation (diploma, handshake, new title 'graduate').
