Liminality Affect and Flesh

In: Somatechnics: journal of bodies, technologies, power, Volume 12, Issue 3, p. 140-161

Abstract

Liminality is an anthropological concept that has been influential in contemporary social studies. This article is written from an organisation culture and studies perspective wherein liminality has been seen: (i) as something that must be controlled, (ii) as a utopian call to creativity, and (iii) as a dystopian entrapment. Liminality has to do with whether the study of practice has been excessively cognitive whereby the human is reduced to concepts of control, efficiency and profit; and whereby the soma (Gr.) of the physical body is marginalised as mind, spirit, and ideation are prioritised. Thus, what of sarx (Gr.) or the flesh of existence (see Merleau-Ponty, Klossowski)? In this article we explore liminality evaluating its relationship to bodily-ness / bodyless-ness, affect and text. We start with a discussion of liminality as originated by the anthropologists van Gennep and Turner, and as pushed aside by Weick, but lionised as creativity by Kostera, and denounced as stagnation by Szakolczai. This is followed by an auto-ethnographic case study. The case study points to the unheimisch2of liminality which we examine via Pierre Klossowski's manifoldness. Realising that text about liminality and its embodiment easily becomes paradoxical (unembodied and affectless), we present a non-textual (i.e., not written) visual reaction to the case; again, in the spirit of Klossowski; and we conclude with reflections co-inspired by Maurice Merlau-Ponty on the physical affectivity of liminality.