Sunday, October 24, 2010

Liminal

         A month or two ago I came across the word liminal, and I looked it up.  As an adjective, liminal means “situated at a sensory threshold, hence barely perceptible.” The noun, limen, is a threshold point of physiological or psychological response, the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect.  More prosaically, it can also mean the sill of a doorway or an entranceway. 
         I became slightly fascinated with this word, though, other than as the doorway threshold, I’ve been a bit stumped on how to use it in a sentence or even an idea.  Psychological threshold?  Amazing.  How about, “I feel I’m on the limen of a mental breakthrough today,” or, “The internet has made modern life so culturally liminal.”
         After musing a month on this interesting word it occurred to me to find the original context in which I came across it.  I remembered seeing the word in The Cult Film Reader, but in which of the many essays?  I thought I’d seen it in an essay about director Jesus (Jess) Franco, and my recall was right on: I quickly located it in Joan Hawkins’ essay "The anxiety of influence: Georges Franju and the medical horrorshows of Jess Franco." 
So here is the context: The demanding nature of the jazz score in The Awful Dr. Orlof helps to situate the film in the same kind of liminal space occupied by Franju’s Les Yeux Sans Visage.  Invoking both the cerebral work and reception associated with high culture and the physical affect and response associated with low sex-horror, the film seems permanently poised between high and low genres, belonging to both of them simultaneously. 
So, liminal space.  Cultural limens.  I like it, but it is, I thought, an academic word not a conversational one.  Who wants to use a word in a sentence that only snobby academics will get?
         Then something occurred to me: SUBLIMINAL.  Obviously, I thought, I know what this one means, but I decided to look it up anyway.  Subliminal means “below the threshold of consciousness.” 
         Isn’t that funny that liminal should be an obscure word, difficult to use or even make sense of, but we all know what subliminal means.  The evolution of our language is ever fascinating.

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