Visual Lexicon

Abstract

Rites of Passage: “The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (“threshold people”) are necessarily ambigious, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space. [...]They may be disguised as monsters, wear only a strip of clothing, or even go naked, to demonstrate that as liminal beings they have no status, property, insignia, secular clothing indicating rank or role, position in a kingship system - in short, nothing that may distinguish them from their fellow neophytes or initiands.”