International

Political Anthropology

IPA Journal ISSN 2283-9887 - Journal Website: https://www.politicalanthropology.org

Call for Papers: Liminality and Performance

Looking back over the half-century since Turner’s The Ritual Process recovered the term
liminality, it is clear that this term is central to understanding contemporary society. Of
course, the celebratory impulses of his work are unsurprising for 1969, and his orientation
to performance arts and creativity are very much of that zeitgeist. Yet contemporary
thought must also recognise the ambivalent character of liminality; freedom from structure
is both the dream and nightmare of our times and the capacity to playfully recreate identity
is matched by chronic uncertainty.

Liminality opens up the possibility of ‘performance’, whereby meaning can be recreated

out of tradition. Yet, the open-ended character of our modern transitions also implies that
everyone is constantly subject to the imperative of performance; nothing is established,
fixed or given, but always needs to be performed again. Indeed, as the phrase ‘social
construction’ becomes a ubiquitous truism, now the phrase ‘performative’ or
‘performatively constituted’ has become common parlance. These phrases express the
liminal perception that nothing is ‘real’ or ‘given’ but only becomes so, continuously but
incompletely – which reflects the character of modernity, but in itself is not an answer or
insight of any sort. Rather, it is an experience and cultural idea which needs to be
chronicled, understood and interpreted.

This special issue invites theoretical reflections, empirical papers and short commentaries
on the topic of ‘Liminality and Performance’.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Liminality in modernity, transitions, transformations and crises

Performances of identity and politics
The history of liminality as a concept and an experience
Aesthetic performances as symptoms and diagnoses of the condition of liminality
Liminal spaces, groups, processes and practices

Deadline for submission: 20th of May 2019

Submission guidelines: https://www.politicalanthropology.org/9-ipa-journal/71-submissions

An electronic copy of the manuscript should be emailed to info@politicalanthropology.org in

Microsoft Word .doc format. The manuscript should include the author’s full name and full
contact details on a separate page.

Guest Editors: Tom Boland & Marius I. Benta