Liminal

Poetry by Jessica Benzing

Suspended liminality: Vacillating affects in cyberbullying/research

This paper develops a concept of liminal hotspots in the context of i) a secondary analysis of a cyberbullying case involving a group of school children from a Danish school, and ii) an altered auto-ethnography in which the authors ‘entangle’ their own experiences with the case analysis. These two sources are used to build an account of a liminal hotspot conceived as an occasion of troubled and suspended transformative transition in which a liminal phase is extended and remains unresolved. The altered auto-ethnography is used to explore the affectivity at play in liminal hotspots, and this liminal affectivity is characterised in terms of volatility, vacillation, suggestibility and paradox

Introduction to the Special Issue on Liminal Hotspots

This article introduces a special issue of Theory and Psychology on liminal hotspots. A liminal hotspot is an occasion during which people feel they are caught suspended in the circumstances of a transition that has become permanent. The liminal experiences of ambiguity and uncertainty that are typically at play in transitional circumstances acquire an enduring quality that can be described as a “hotspot”. Liminal hotspots are characterized by dynamics of paradox, paralysis, and polarization, but they also intensify the potential for pattern shift. The origins of the concept are described followed by an overview of the contributions to this special issue

From paradox to pattern shift: Conceptualising liminal hotspots and their affective dynamics

This article introduces the concept of liminal hotspots as a specifically psychosocial and sociopsychological type of wicked problem, best addressed in a process-theoretical framework. A liminal hotspot is defined as an occasion characterised by the experience of being trapped in the interstitial dimension between different forms-of-process. The paper has two main aims. First, to articulate a nexus of concepts associated with liminal hotspots that together provide general analytic purchase on a wide range of problems concerning “troubled” becoming. Second, to provide concrete illustrations through examples drawn from the health domain. In the conclusion, we briefly indicate the sense in which liminal hotspots are part of broader and deeper historical processes associated with changing modes for the management and navigation of liminality

Liminal reciprocity and factorization statistics

Let $M_{d,n}(q)$ denote the number of monic irreducible polynomials in $\mathbb{F}_q[x_1, x_2, \ldots , x_n]$ of degree $d$. We show that for a fixed degree $d$, the sequence $M_{d,n}(q)$ converges $q$-adically to an explicitly determined rational function $M_{d,\infty}(q)$. Furthermore we show that the limit $M_{d,\infty}(q)$ is related to the classic necklace polynomial $M_{d,1}(q)$ by an involutive functional equation, leading to a phenomenon we call liminal reciprocity. The limiting first moments of factorization statistics for squarefree polynomials are expressed in terms of a family of symmetric group representations as a consequence of liminal reciprocity.Comment: 22 pages. To appear in Algebraic Combinatoric

Interaction, reaction and performance: The human body tracking project

As a result of new technological advancements in performance practice, I am arguing that new liminal spaces exist where there is a potential for a reconfiguration of creativity and experimentation in performance practice

Love and Liminality: Understanding College as a Liminal Phase in regards to Romantic Love and Courtship

Twelve students at the University of Texas at Austin have been interviewed in an attempt to understand romantic love and courtship on the college campus. Romantic love and courtship on UT campus are best understood through the conceptualization of college as a liminal period. Students are expressing liminality in their ambiguous and unstructured behaviors and perceptions of courtship, and their rendition of romantic love as irreconcilable on the college campus. Romantic love is thus conceptualized as the ‘structured result’ of ‘the activity which has no structure’ that is college courtship. It is through this activity with no structure that students learn and perpetuate their ideal romantic love that they will seek out after the liminal period, that ultimately structures them into marriage and family units.Anthropolog

Liminal

My porcelain sculptural work explores the passage from life to death in the form of boat imagery. Many cultures and belief systems have water and boat references in their mythoi surrounding the passage of the soul or spirit to the afterlife. I combine many disparate boat elements into each piece in order to allude to an archetypal form. The black and white tones refer to mourning rituals of various cultures as well as the traditional practice of scrimshaw, in which sailors once made carvings on whale bone or walrus tusks and then inked the lines. My boats are intended as metaphors for passage into the afterlife and symbols of human commonality. They hold their place in both the physical and the spiritual realms