THE ISLT 9

NEGOTIATING THE THRESHOLD

Thresholds or limina can be found wherever one cares to look; they are a fifth dimension of the cultural field. A fortiori, they are consubstantial to texts. One of the basic premises of all research into liminality is that the threshold exhibits characteristics different in kind from those of the spaces that encompass it. It may of course elide itself and remain unnoticed; it may manifest itself as no more than the alternation of two states, as an irreducibly binary form; or it may emerge as a veritable ‘third space’ (Said, Soja).
We view the limen as a Bakhtinian ‘chronotope of the threshold’ in which space and time deviate from the ordinary or the expected. The threshold is not just a ‘place’ to cross but a spatiotemporal site to enter, to traverse, even to inhabit. It is a domain of potentiality rather than of actuality; as Turner put it, it is the realm of the subjunctive. It is hence ambiguous, equivocal, unstable, and best seen dynamically, as inextricably linked to process. Liminality and transition therefore presuppose each other.
In the mercurial field shaped by narrative texts, goals are not assured; a transition may or not reach closure but will always consist in an engagement with the limen, in the course of which certain changes may take place. What occurs on the threshold is therefore no simple crossover but a veritable negotiation, even when the process is so straightforward or instantaneous as to appear invisible (we shall then need to reduce the speed of our film projector so as to catch the process in slow motion; we shall need slow reading). These reflections can be extended to genres and media, as to the process of reading.
Negotiation may involve conflict, but also agreement, complicity, compromise, exchange. The OED tells us that the concept involves ‘the action of getting over or round some obstacle by skilful manoeuvring,’ as well as ‘a course of treaty with another to obtain or bring about some result.’ Bringing about some result is of course part of the intentions of agents, but the result aimed at will not be necessarily realised in the process itself of negotiation. Given the potential, ‘subjunctive’ nature of the limen, not attaining the goal is not to be viewed as a failure of the process but as one of its possible outcomes.
For thresholds are no inert sites: a variety of forces operate in and upon them. Intra-textually, characters must deal with friendly, hostile or unfamiliar environments, with fate or providence, with other characters, with themselves; they will hesitate, reconsider, retrace their steps, take new stances, and in this doing engage, and shape, an unstable threshold zone. Intertextually, it suffices to point at the reciprocal impact of texts bearing on other texts, or at the ‘friction’ or wealth that arise at the interface between texts. As regards the textual field, the forces at work include publishing, translating, reading, performance, criticism, teaching, censorship. These and other factors generate a dynamic of oscillation, instability and flux. ‘Negotiation’ seems the most appropriate term for the complex set of actions and reactions taking place when characters, narrators, readers, listeners, viewers or players confront the textual threshold.
We invite speakers to tackle these and related issues. We welcome analyses of texts that illustrate how characters and/or voices, readers, listeners, players negotiate their way through. We equally welcome theoretical excursions into the shape and dynamics of textual thresholds. As always, we deal with the broad notions of limen and text, and it has become a hallmark of these seminars that they foster interdisciplinary approaches from such areas as folkloristics, musicology, anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, the non-verbal arts, virtual reality or videogames.

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