HUM-8 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Deconstruction, Betwixt & Between, Liminality
Document Summary
Cyclic rituals that celebrate the inauguration of an activity such as the harvest or planting. Contingent rituals in response to an individual or collective crisis/ event, such as birth, puberty marriage and death. Any ritual will incorporate a variety of symbols meaningful to the members of the society performing it. Separation symbolic behavior symbolizing the detachment of an individual from an earlier fixed state in the social structure. Liminal period (margin) the state of the subject of the ritual is ambiguous, he passes through a realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state. Often this period is both structurally and physically invisible. The symbols that represent the neophyte are associated with death, and the neophyte is treated as one of the dead. Aggregation the ritual subject is stable once more and has the rights and obligations of a clearly defined and structural type, also is expected to behave in accordance with certain standards.
