:: Life in-between ::

A concept I keep tripping across lately in the books I'm reading is the concept of liminality. Essentially it is a transient time or event boundary, an in-betweenness of a moment or event, in between one state of being or identity and another. Common liminal events are weddings, graduations, new unemployment, going into labour, etc. Common liminal moments are the person who is about to shoplift for the first time, just before they do so and become irrevocably forever a shoplifter, or the closing of a door on an old apartment or house before the person hands in the key and moves on to the new home.

I think liminality is a time in which we truly feel our humanity, our ability to choose. It's a state of being between choice and action, between decision and effect.

The poet Robert Frost understood liminality deeply -- his poems "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Eve" and "The Road Not Taken" suggest or dramatize it.

While I've been reading about liminality in Turkle and Shields, neither really fully apply the concept it to the online space and experience. Both mention it just in passing - it isn't a part of their overall thesis.

Somehow, though, the concept speaks to me at many levels when applied to the virtual experience. There are so many liminal moments and events online, enough that each person might be said to experience many in a given year. They can be as small as switching ISPs and therefore IPs, or as large as letting go of an email address and assuming a new one, deliberately killing off a character in an online game and preparing a new one, or deciding to learn a new game and thereby preparing to embark in the new online world.

If applied to digital gaming, per the example above, what might be learned if the liminal moment of "dying" and being recreated in the game are examined? If the process of creating a new character, liminal definitely, were observed and questioned and thought about? What is that feeling that beats in the chest when you assign yourself a name and begin to craft a new identity? How does that experience change a person?

This whole concept is one I'm going to bookmark in my head and here, to keep an eye on and consider as a research topic. I think there is lots there to study and attempt to understand.