If I look on the PhD candidature as a period of liminality, what are the implications?
This from Beth Barrie at Indiana U.:
Liminality is a state of being in between phases. In
a rite of passage the individual in the liminal phase is neither a
member of the group she previously belonged to nor is she a member of
the group she will belong to upon the completion of the rite. The most
obvious example is the teenager who is neither an adult nor a child.
"Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and
between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention,
and ceremonial" (Turner, 1969:95). Turner extended the liminal concept
to modern societies in his study of liminoid phenomena in western
society. He pointed out the similarities between the "leisure genres of
art and entertainment in complex industrial societies and the rituals
and myths of archaic, tribal and early agrarian cultures" (1977:43).
Closely associated to liminality is communitas which
describes a society during a liminal period that is "unstructured or
rudimentarily structured [with] a relatively undifferentiated
comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit
together to the general authority of the ritual elders" (Turner,
1969:96).
The notion of communitas is enhanced by Turner's
concept of anti-structure. In the following passage Turner clarifies
the ideas of liminal, communitas and anti-structure:
I have used the term "anti-structure,"... to
describe both liminality and what I have called "communitas." I meant
by it not a structural reversal... but the liberation of human
capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity, etc., from the
normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social
statuses (1982:44).
It is the potential of an anti-structured liminal
person or liminal society (i.e., communitas) that makes Turner's ideas
so engaging. People or societies in a liminal phase are a "kind of
institutional capsule or pocket which contains the germ of future
social developments, of societal change" (Turner, 1982:45).
So grad school as communitas? Not quite right - it is structured. Or maybe the institution is trying to impose structure on it... Certainly some candidates resist the responsibilities of academia - they behave more like students than academics (eg the Ravelry discussions about grad student identity).
There's an excellent summary of Turner's position in Liminality, Anti-Liminality, and the Victorian Novel
Author(s): Sarah Gilead
Source: ELH, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 183-197
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Downloaded today.
Added 10 August: the wikipedia page on liminality. No citations, but an exellent overview nevertheless.