May 312012
‘Liminal’ is a word that’s been copping up a lot recently in various conversations and I started to wonder if I really knew what it means. I’d vaguely thought it was related to ‘subliminal’, maybe a psychological term, that was being borrowed to use to describe physical spaces.
Wikipedia says:
The spatial dimension of liminality can include specific places, larger zones or areas, or entire countries and larger regions. Liminal places can range from borders and frontiers to no man’s lands and disputed territories, to crossroads to perhaps airports or hotels, which people pass through but do not live in: arguably indeed all ‘romantic travel enacts the three stages that characterize liminality: separation, marginalization, and reaggregation’