Pleasures of Liminality

Abstract

Since the comprehensive theorization of liminality and its attributes by the Scottish anthropologist Victor Turner in the late 1960s and 1970s, the concept of liminality has been applied to more than the threshold experience of individuals. As liminality in general describes a state of transition, the concept has been expanded to include rather different spaces, genres, and conditions. In this article, I propose liminality as a threshold concept that might offer a new and different angle for looking at legal and literary fiction(s). Liminality might allow us to bridge the conceptual gaps between the disciplines with regard to the general use and function of fiction(s) and fictionality in law and in literature; it may thus prove to be valuable for interdisciplinary approaches in both fields. I will, however, not attempt to formulate a new theory of fiction, since in contrast to the numerous and not always successful attempts at defining fiction(s) and fictionality, I am not interested in locking down either phenomena in law and in literature, but rather in identifying and highlighting some common aspects. Liminality, I argue, lends itself profitably to the cross-disciplinary orientation of an approach which addresses both legal and literary perspectives. It appears to be particularly suited to bring out the functions of fictions and fictionality in both law and literature, which is ultimately to translate the merely imaginable into something conceivable.