Liminality and Communitas

This article by Victor Turner was very interesting.  I have to admit that I am still trying to come to grips with its true meaning.  The ideas presented in the article are a bit abstract, and he uses some very technical language that made it hard to follow what he was really saying.  Were it not for the abstract at the beginning of the essay, I probably would not have gotten anything out of it.

The essay deals with liminality and communitas.  When I first read this, I was already lost.  Limenality means (as near as I can figure) the transitional periods in a given right of passage.  Communitas is used to mean the social constructs that form during those periods of liminality.  He states that the people who enter these states of liminality, are so far removed from the “normal” ebb and flow of “normal” society, that is to say, society as we know it, that they form their own kind of community.

This unit is community, religious experience, and virtual reality.  I think that this article can be used as an outline to understand the community that arises out of the liminal period of religious experience.  The essay requires futher analysis, which I plan to do, and will post further findings.

~ by nebuchadnezzar85 on February 25, 2008.