Dr. Kevin Corstorphine, Lecturer in English at the University of Hull, tells us that the term 'liminality' comes from anthropology. Anthropologists used it to describe a period of life, adolescence, for instance, "which is between social roles but also where in many cultures people are separated from society in a ritual way."
"This sense of being 'in-between' has become a useful way of thinking about the way that Gothic literature often focuses on areas that are often taken for granted: the boundary between life and [beyond] being an obvious one, with supernatural entities existing somewhere between these two states."
On the Internet, of course, the term means something different. "In modern aesthetic terms, it has taken on the meaning of the eerie feeling that you can get in a space that is neither here nor there, like an empty train station or an abandoned playground," Dr. Corstorphine says.
Dr. Corstorphine points to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) as one of the classical examples of the use of liminal spaces in Gothic fiction. "[It's] full of liminal spaces that dictate the story," he says. "Van Helsing says that 'He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come', so in other words, he has to be willingly invited across the threshold."
"It is also a novel that shows an obsession with the boundaries between life and [beyond], the integrity of the human body, animal and human, the past and the present, and the liminal spaces between all of these dichotomies. Dracula is threatening because he exists in this space," the Lecturer in English explains. "The way that the novel is told through letters and newspaper reports even puts his existence for the reader in a liminal space."
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According to Dr. Kevin Corstorphine, liminality was an important concept in Gothic fiction from the very start. "The Gothic tradition begins with a fascination with architecture and physical spaces: way back in The Castle of Otranto (1764) Horace Walpole gives us a story about a young woman trapped in underground passages and a ghostly figure returning to smash his giant fist through the castle walls."
"The Gothic attempts to disturb the reader by blurring categories and asking questions about the boundaries that make us feel secure," the lecturer explains. "H.P. Lovecraft, in Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927), writes of cosmic horror as the feeling of listening to 'the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.' The Gothic thrives in those gaps between our understanding, for example between religion and science."
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On the Internet, however, liminal spaces are surreal, eerie, and unsettling. In most cases, they're abandoned or empty (of people) spaces: offices, streets, corridors, hotel hallways, etc. Liminal spaces gained a lot of popularity in 2019 when a post on 4chan about The Backrooms, a particular liminal space, went viral.
The Internet is very fond of liminal spaces. Twitter page @SpaceLiminalBot has 1.2M followers. The Instagram account @liminalmoods boasts 463k followers. The Reddit community r/LiminalSpaces has almost 800k members. They pride themselves on The Matrix-like aesthetics, with descriptions like "Trip on the verge of reality" and "You've been here before. Wake up."
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The surrealism of a liminal space comes from its familiarity. Just like with the concept of the uncanny valley, liminal spaces creep us out and attract us so much at the same time because it's a mix of the known and the unknown. Some point to Giorgio de Chirico's "The Tower" as an example of liminal space in art, yet others say the place for that to work should be more recognizable.
To those living in current times, the aesthetic and concept of liminal spaces seem especially attractive because of the current state of uncertainty our world and society give us. As Jake Pitre writes for The Atlantic, "The pace of modern life seems impossible to keep up with, yet our lived reality does not change. So as society waits for the breaking point to come, liminal spaces make the anticipation of those fears visible, and reaffirm that other people are looking at the world the same way."
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