Definitions

Philosophical & Anthropological Terminology

Liminality is a theoretical and methodological concept which originated within anthropology at beginning of the 20th century through the work of Arnold van Gennep and later Victor Turner. This notion emphasizes the need for a transformative space-time in the human experience and for a temporary suspension of the normative borders that orient it. Through ritualized symbolic forms, the individual can experience an “in-between” condition and question one’s own identity and role in the community of belonging, introducing new balances between innovation and preservation. Victor Turner developed it further in the 1960s-70s—for him liminality had specific properties: hierarchy dissolves, normal rules suspend, identity becomes fluid, and there’s a heightened sense of possibility or danger. It’s generative precisely because it’s unstable. A liminal space is a threshold that transforms what passes through it. Not aesthetics. Not emptiness. Not nostalgia. The threshold has to do something—the thing that enters is different from the thing that exits. That’s the entire definition. Van Gennep’s initiates went in as boys and came out as men. The transformation is what makes the threshold real.

Marc Augé’s Non-Places (1992) He wasn’t using the word liminal but he was describing the same phenomenon. Airports, motorways, supermarkets, hotel rooms—spaces of transit defined by their transience, where people exist in solitude alongside each other without genuine social encounter. He called these non-places in contrast to anthropological places which carry identity, history, and relation. By the 2000s liminality had spread into so many fields it had become almost analytically diluted: organizational theory, nursing research, migration studies, gender theory. The common thread is always the between-state but the specific properties Turner identified get progressively stripped away.

Liminoid Transition as a process whereby individuals, motivated by social critique, detach from conventional organizational structures in order to change society. In contrast, as Turner (1974, p. 76) explained, liminality is an integral part of society and as such, it functions to maintain the status quo. Similar to some under-institutionalized liminal experiences (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016), individuals in liminoid transitions embark on an open-ended transition that does not lead them in a carefully arranged and timely manner to ‘the next logical step in a role hierarchy’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016, p. 47). However, unlike other under-institutionalized experiences, individuals undergoing liminoid transitions position themselves outside and against such structures. They are motivated by critique and aim to initiate and, ultimately, change structures, where the benefits, if realized, go beyond the individual (Stephan et al., 2016, p. 1252). Their efforts are not primarily self-oriented, but world-oriented: in liminal transitions the institution changes the individual, in liminoid transitions the individual changes the institution.

Platonic Forms According to Plato, for any conceivable thing or property there is a corresponding Form, a perfect example of that thing or property. The list is almost inexhaustible. Tree, House, Mountain, Man, Woman, Ship, Cloud, Horse, Dog, Table and Chair, would all be examples of putatively independently-existing abstract perfect Ideas.

Internet & Pop Culture Terminology

Liminal Spaces (Aesthetic) The vibe of empty malls and 3am airports captures something real—those spaces do have liminal properties, but the internet collapsed liminal into meaning “eerie emptiness” or “nostalgic uncanny.” A surreal image isn’t liminal just because it’s unsettling. A dreamlike painting isn’t liminal just because it feels strange. A subset of aesthetic liminal spaces is The Backrooms, a 2019 creepypasta from 4chan’s /x/ board. Pop Culture “Liminal Spaces” have vibes of dead malls, dreamcore, Corporate/Bureaucratic, Suburbia, David Lynch films, and poolrooms. This has spawned a huge number of movies, video games, shows, and fan fiction including Stranger Things, Adventure Time, The Stanley Parable, the A24 Backrooms movie (2026), the Neon Exit 8 film, Vivarium (2019 film), Twin Peaks, SCP Foundation, and Dreamcore indie games. In these pop culture examples, the “threshold” doesn’t actually transform the character; it usually traps them. The horror or “vibe” comes from the fact that the transformation has failed or stalled, leaving the individual in a permanent, hollow “in-between” that should have been temporary.

Liminal Forms, a Working Definition

A Liminal Form is a decayed universal. It is what happens to a Platonic Form after it has been run through the human copying process for thousands of years—copied, copied again, each copy losing information from the previous one, until what remains is the ghost of the structure without any of its animating content. The shape of a courthouse without justice. The geometry of a temple without the sacred. The architecture of a market without exchange. Liminal Forms are horrifying precisely because they are recognizable. You know what they were supposed to be. You can see what they have become. The fluorescent office corridor of the Backrooms mythology is a Liminal Form. It is the Form of collective human space after the copying process has run to completion.