Al Shrbaji, S. (2020). On walking in derelict urban spaces: Experiencing liminality in a city. A Obra Nasce: Revista de Arquitetura e Urbanismo Da Universidade Fernando Pessoa, 14, 73–83.
Architecture
Van Eyck … stated an attempt to reunite spatial and temporal polarities, to evoke a sense of place.
The liminal setting is described as an adjoining of worlds during a transition – always in motion – of an individual into, out of, or around a geometrical parameter.
when the term liminality entered architecture in the 1950 ́s, it was translated in geometrical figures, the circle and the rectangle, to express a liminal setting of human transience.
Dereliction
dereliction is an outcome of these in-between occurrences, namely its life and death intervals.
Dereliction, thereto, expresses both a state of abandonment and a state of ruination; meaning, its environment is in-between the aforementioned states. There is where a liminal structure takes place.
dereliction is a liminal state, where its envi- ronment is evoked as a liminal space.
Terms such as abandonment, ruination, and dereliction exemplify a pres- ence with liminality, as a gradually dispersing phenome- non into the progressive placidity
Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre coined existentialism and related it to abandonment in his writing “Existentialism is a Humanism” in 1946. Abandonment is not a descriptive thought about a condition of something but of some being. Because Sartre was the first existentialist to separate existentialism from religion, abandonment, as being liminal, was a result of this detachment (abandonment as an autonomy of existence).
Liminality
Liminality, as a term, was coined in a dismantled timeline during the 20th century, by an ethnographer (Arnold van Gennep), an architect (Aldo van Eyck), and a cultural anthropologist (Victor Turner). All of whom described liminality as being a state of in-betweenness.
liminality contains polysemic and polyvalent effects, meaning it shape-shifts according to its referral, it became a non-structural structuralist term.
the neologism of liminality came with the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep’s “Les Rites de Passage” (1908)
Van Gennep drew the attention to liminality, as a new abbreviated form of an individual ́s deliberate and voluntary transition into a disoriented, intermediate state – through time amidst a ritual. This transitioning is rendered in a three-fold sequential structure. The structure synthesizes a three-phased order of rites, into which an individual – from any existing culture – transcends. From the liminal (transition) and what comes prior and after transcending into it, to a context, to a city, and then to a border, the order of phases emphasizes an in-betweenness performed within this procession.
Victor Turner, a cultural anthropologist, on the other hand, reintroduced liminality into anthropology in his essay, “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual” (1974). Turner stressed on the semantic part, which engages with the psychological state and behaviour of an individual, during the transitional phase. By that, he relatively suggests the existence of an anti-structure, which circles back to the non-structural- ity of liminality, making both terms alternatively associated.
liminality embodies a system that could be adequately linked to dissimilar, cohesive or conflicted, sources – ideas, meanings, movements, aspects, or systems.
“inbetween realm, which forms a third place, or threshold, that links as it separates two previously opposed condi- tions.” (Coleman, 2005, p.202)
If liminality as portrayed in derelict urban spaces affects mobility in walking, I argue that liminality as experienced by an individual going through an important psychosocial transition, as in religious liminality, should also affect how one walks (or whether one walks at all) in space and time, which in turn, affects how one experiences, perceives, and eventually reinterprets one’s liminal state. When a person in a psychosocial liminal state walks, liminality immediately becomes omnipresent: it exists both in here and out there. The walker traverses both existential and geographic wildernesses.
What comes out of this circular dance between psychosocial liminality and walking in space and time is the New Self Becoming. Interestingly, the circle is a geometric shape that seems to best capture liminality in architecture.
Limen, latin for threshold, is present in the limits of space and time. Meaning, through liminality, our movement is recorded, where it is a remainder of both space and time. Consequentially, liminality affects mobility, the stimulator of walking.
“Having attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (“threshold people”)” (Turner, 1966, p.95), we become in-between a setting, in- between a texture, in-between a within and without, and in-between a reflection inside and outside the derelict. By that sense, the omnipresence of liminality is part of this existentiality.
The limen is always moving
the walking operation is part of the liminal transition. Meaning, it is always active, as we are relatively always traversing limits.
Photography
the use of the medium of photography is of a contiguity in expressing the relation between dereliction and liminality through our environmental experiences.
The documentation is associated to us, to our environmental experiences and to the derelict, as a correspondence to liminality, the term itself.
liminality is the threshold and photography is an in-between captured memory within that threshold.
Walking is an expression of liminality
our walking is determined by the passage we take.
Walking is defined “as a space of enunciation.” (Certeau, 1984, p.98) of a bodily activity.
walking thus becomes a rhetoric of liminality
Deleuze, G., Guattari F., Massumi, B. (1987). 1730: Becoming- Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming- Imperceptible. In: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, pp. 232-309.
Becomings are liminal
“a becoming is always in the middle; one can only get it by the middle. A becoming is [..] the in-between, the border [..]” (Deleuze and Guat- tari, 1987, p. 293)
Gennep, A., Vizedom, M., and Caffee G. (1960). The Rites of Passage. The University of Chicago Press.
Liminal stage
we “cannot pass from one [place] to the other without going through an intermediate stage.” (Gennep, et al., 1960, p. 1)
Rites of passage
“The rites of passage ultimately correspond to this fundamental necessity, sometimes so closely that they take the form of rites of death and rebirth.” (Gennep et al., 1960, p.182)
Hickey, A., Pauli-Myler, T., & Smith, C. (2018). On the edges of encounter: Walking, liminality and the act of being between (K. Snepvangers & S. Davis, Eds.; pp. 37–54). Common Ground Publishing. https://doi.org/10.18848/978-1-86335-132-4/CGP
Definitions of walking
Walking is “both the physiologically mediated propulsion of the body and socially performed action occurring within closely defined realms of (acceptable) practice” (Hickey et al., 2018, p. 48).
Walking “is a profoundly social activity: that in their timings, rhythms and inflections, the feet respond as much as does the voice to the presence of others” (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008, p. 2).
Walking is a quintessential method for ethnography
The cognitive and sensorial nature of walking makes it a powerful ethnographic method (Ingold 2011, p. 17).
Walking mobilizies “all of our senses of smell and touch as well as vision” (Tim Ingold, 2011, p. 42).
Walking is an embodied and “deeply reflexive point of encounter” (Hickey et al., 2018, p. 37).
Walking provokes sensory, liminal, and uncertain encounters.
Walking can be a localized and evolving methodology.
walking stands as an exemplary technique of ethnographic inquiry and that through the opportunity walking offers as an “embodied practice, performative act, as well as relational movement” (Yi’En, 2014, p. 212) the core features of ethnography are found.
Walking makes ethnography an engaged methodology where movement is central.
The movement of walking provides the ‘stuff’ of the inquiry by opening new terrains for exploration, and a chance for new modes of engagement between researcher and researched to emerge.
walking is in fact ethnography in action
Walking certainly did afford a specific insight into a set of experiences that became, by their nature, necessarily peripatetic.
Walking together results to parrhessia (speaking openly)
walking offers the possibility for new forms of knowledge. Walking allows for the traversing of interstitial spaces; spaces between fixed points of meaning where conventions and established ways of doing things might be challenged and subverted even if only momentarily. This is an important consideration for walking as method. The affordance walking offers finds voice in the (potential) irreverence the walk enables. Walking between places offers the opportunity for parhessia (of speaking openly), freed from the strictures that those places at each end of the walk prescribe.
it is with the irreverence and possibility for speaking openly, or more fully, that an affordance for deeper knowing emerges.
through traversing the interstitial spaces that are opened between points of fixed meaning and moving across the terrain of the field and the terrain of experience between Self and Other, that an opportunity for something ethnographically more genuine, spontaneous and experimental emerges.
walking enables rich and meaningful accounts of experience to emerge.
Walking launches the researcher and the researched into a shared liminality that becomes the foundation for genuine connection
When walking, an ethnographer encounters two entities: the Other and the place where they are walking (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008. Before the walk, the ethnographer may have very little commonality with the Other. But as the work happens and the ethnographer joins the Other in encountering the place and each other in traversing place and experience, i.e., liminality, a commonality between the researcher and the researched emerges, a commonality that lays the foundation for deeper connection and, therefore, more honest revelations. Through walking, ethnography becomes what it should always be: a “shared knowing, generated in place, together” (Hickey et al., 2018, p. 40). The knowledge that emerges out of this shared liminality facilitated by walking is characterized by ethnographers who have used walking methodologies as genuine, honest, new, and deeply relational.
==When applied to an autoethnographic encounter of someone in a psycho-socio-religious liminal state, what walking does is to generate a temporal segment through movement from within that liminal state and transforms that segment into a shared encounter between the Old Self and the New Self Becoming. The idea that the old You and the new You is sharing this moment in the threshold becomes the foundation for more honest reflection.
Walking is a liminal practice that creates a better ethnographic practice
walking carries with it the possibility for the exploration of the liminal.
walking as an act of being positioned at the threshold.
Liminality is activated through walking, of entering and progressing through a space of movement and uncertainty.
Walking as liminal practice opens access to spaces prone to disruption and uncertainty, but from which might emerge a “topology for new tasks toward other places of thinking and putting to work, innovations leading to new forms” (Lather, 1997, p. 486). In walking together, the researcher and researched undertake a shared act of becoming, but importantly do so according to reformulations of the practices that mark more traditional, linear research practices. In a walking method, dialogue is framed as co-created; a discovery of new terrains that emerge from the encounter. This is a research practice that opens access to the terrain of the Other according to the encounters and opportunities for dialogue that walking-with provokes.
The traversal of space afforded by walking is also metaphorical, in that it provides insight into the experience of Self and Other. In traversing the physical, the liminal spaces of experience in between Self and Other are also encountered.
walking offered a chance to engage the experience of the Other through the dialogues that were broached through walking.
Ethnography is liminal in nature
Ethnography in this sense is the practice of moving from the familiar to engage the lifeworld of the Other; a process of becoming invested with the unfamiliar. To emerge with some resolution (however incomplete) of the experience of the Other stands as the very purpose of the ethnographic endeavour.
Walking makes a liminal space a fruitful source of knowledge
With walking comes the possibility to more readily traverse, physically, symbolically and metaphorically the space and the experience of the Other. The interstitial locations between points of familiarity that walking provokes opens the liminal as a fruitful place for inquiry and shared understanding. In this regard we see the act of walking as a provocation for more than the physical traversal of space alone;
cross boundaries and to ensure that the ‘space between’ functions as a productive environment of new knowledge and a space of new understandings.
The two most critical features of walking
Two of the most critical features of walking is encounter and relationality. If we adopt Hickey et al.’s (2018) proposal that ethnographies should be “deeply relational encounters” (37), then walking has to be a quintessential ethnographic method.
William Foot-Whyte and Street Corner Society
A model for how walking can be applied in ethnography may be extracted from the book Street Corner Society, where the ethnographer William Foot-Whyte walked with his participants. Foot-Whye, a pioneer of participant observation, noticed how the geographic space of the slum area he and his participants walked through, along with the meanings and cultural behaviors attached to specific parts of the area, dictated his research progress, i.e., the questions he could ask, the behaviors he could act out, and the identities he could or could not take hold.
The act of walking opened opportunities for encounters that otherwise would not have been possible
walking as that which is quintessentially in-between, a space of disruption and uncertainty, but from which might emerge a “topology for new tasks toward other places of thinking and putting to work” (Lather, 1997, p. 486).
walking opened an opportunity for informality and experimentation.
Walking as subject of inquiry (ethnography of walking)
an ethnography of walking would perceive the act of walking within its socially mediated contexts, and explore how walking as an action is performed, how the meanings that attach with this are symbolically and culturally mediated and indeed, how the physical performativity that marks the very act itself comes to gain social meaning.
open for consideration the significance of walking as a necessarily social practice
nvests attention solely in the practice of walking as a socially mediated practice.
Walking as ethnography or ambulatory inquiry
the walking ethnographer takes the encounters from walking as the object of study with the interactions these encounters afford standing as the stuff of the ethnographic inquiry. Not only would this open for consideration the experiences of walking itself (as a socially mediated act), but also the methodological dynamics that are induced through ambulatory inquiry.
walking functions as a method for inquiring into the world and the experience that being situated (on foot) in-place and in-proximity to Others prescribes.
Walking transforms the identities of both researcher and researched
Just as the researcher undertakes their work in the liminal space of the field, so too do the identities of both the researcher and researched find meaning according to the act of traversing the distance between.
walking functioned as concomitant to the discovery of the Self, with the walks provoking encounters with the Self just as much as they provoked encounters with Others and space.
Walking unveils the liminal space and the distance between Old Self and New Self.
This is exactly what happened to me while walking from Los Baños to San Pablo. What is interesting to me is that
Walking provides a means to cross this liminal space between Old Self and New Self.
This means is an easy means. It makes the self relaxed and trust. Visual cues in the environment become prompts for reflection. Conversation with oneself is more natural compared to say journaling in a desk. Natural breaks are allowed.
How do visual cues help traverse liminal spaces?
Cite example of a friend I met online, which I wrote at Lilim 1(02).
One of the things I lost after leaving my childhood religion was community. As a JW, I interacted with individuals who believed the same things I believe in on almost a daily basis. This was lost after I left. I tried hard even until now to find community and accepting that being in a liminal space such as where I am right now means coming at peace to the fact that I won’t be connected to people I share similar beliefs with as easily as before and that differences and learning to navigate differences shall now be my norm. Walking and noticing umbrellaworts and how two flowers of different colors could grow from the same plant made me ask whether it is possible to grow community despite differences.
As the New Self Becoming traverses the liminal space between Old Self and New Self, the identities of the researcher (the New Self Becoming) and the researched (Old Self) are transformed.
Transformation happens through the writing of new narratives and the creation of new meanings. This exercise is possible in liminal spaces because there are too much unknowns open for questioning, review, and reinterpretation. Traversing these liminal spaces through physical mobility provides the possibility for embodied inquiry.
Walking becomes the common progression (and procession) that unites Old Self and the New Self Becoming.
After my long walk from Los Baños to San Pablo, my writings began talking about how my Old Self as a religious person still manifests in what I currently do and perhaps even if I categorize myself as an agnostic, the work I am doing is still very religious. Walking daily is a religious thing. And the great walkers I read, Thoreau and Bugbee, all have works that can be described as religious.
I want to clarify here that I am using the word religious in its generous liberal sense, which is a commitment to a way of living based on principles regardless of where those principles come from. In my case, in my New Self Becoming, unlike my Old Self that relied on an organization, I set my own principles. But both new and old identities are united by this desire to be religious, and I will never have realized this have I not walked from Los Baños to San Pablo.
But what happened there on the walk? What made me talk to the Old Self that I have resisted, ignored, and intentionally distanced from for years? Ingold (2015) said that walking creates a space for correspondence for everyone participating in the research. In my case, the Old Self and New Self Becoming. Walking does this by “opening an opportunity for more irreverent, open and experimental dialogue” (Hickey et al., 2018). Under a scorching sun, with only an umbrella to protect myself, forgetting to put sunscreen or bring sunglasses, and burdened by the excessive luggage behind my back, what room is there for reverent dialogue? The physicality of walking prompted my New Self Becoming to loosen its guard, to shatter the walls it built around itself, and to finally confront through “irreverent, open and experimental dialogue” that which was always its subject of reseach, but unconcsiously disregarded: my Old Self.
While walking, my New Self Becoming dropped from the tower it thought it always occupied to join my Old Self below as both researcher and participant. By doing so, my New Self Becoming understood my Old Self better, finally confronting it as a worthy subject of study. And what a productive move this was, because my Old Self held knowledge of the terrain that my New Self Becoming does not have. Even more frightening was the realization that perhaps the New Self Becoming has not yet moved that far away from my Old Self, that this new identity that thougt it was new was actually, still very old, that what I was trying to metaphorically walk through was not an expanse but in fact an interstice.
Walking performs the New Self Becoming that has integrated the Old Self.
Solnit, R. (2005). A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Peguin Books.
“getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.” (Solnit, 2005, p. 11)
Stenner, P. (2017). Liminality and experience: a transdisciplinary approach to the psychosocial. Studies in the Psychosocial (STIP). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
This book breathes new life into the study of liminal experiences of transition and transformation, or ‘becoming’. It brings fresh insight into affect and emotion, dream and imagination, and fabulation and symbolism by tracing their relation to experiences of liminality. The author proposes a distinctive theory of the relationship between psychology and the social sciences with much to share with the arts. Its premise is that psychosocial existence is not made of ‘stuff’ like building blocks, but of happenings and events in which the many elements that compose our lives are temporarily drawn together. The social is not a thing but a flow of processes, and our personal subjectivity is part of that flow, ‘selves’ being tightly interwoven with ‘others’. But there are breaks and ruptures in the flow, and during these liminal occasions our experience unravels and is rewoven. This book puts such moments at the core of the psychosocial research agenda. Of transdisciplinary scope, it will appeal beyond psychosocial studies and social psychology to all scholars interested in the interface between experience and social (dis)order.
Liminality is peformed
the experience is a subjective functioning that one contrives in order to become performative.
liminality induces a rupture between reality and fiction. The arise of this split is another nature of liminality—always articulated with an individual perspective—heading to reflect its environment. The liminal process is dedicated, in an attempt, to express the spatial and temporal poetics, or experiences.
“liminal occasions tend to be highly affective in nature because they are formative moments of great significance: leaps into the unknown,” (Stenner, 2017, p. 16) they provoke experiences.
Turner, V. (1966). Liminality and Communatis. In: The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti Structure. Cornell University Press, pp. 94-130.
“liminal entities are neither here nor there…” (Turner, 1966, p. 94)
“liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness…to the wilderness…” (Turner, 1966, p. 95)
Turner, V. (1987). “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage”. In Mahdi, I.C., Foster, S. & Little, M. (eds.) Betwixt and Between: Patterns of and Feminine Initiation. Open Court.
all rites of transition are marked by three phases: separation, margin (or limen), and aggregation. The first phase of separation comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual or group either from an earlier fixed point in the social structure or a set of cultural conditions during the intervening liminal period, the state of the ritual subject is ambiguous; he [sic] passes through a realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state; in the third phase the passage is consummated (Turner, 1987, p. 47).