Rites of Initiation: Gennep’s Three Stages of Liminality and Morrison’s Song of Solomon

• Main Authors: Ching-yang Lai, 賴慶陽
• Other Authors: Professor Frank W. Stevenson, Ph. D.
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81523017767999654693

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 92 === According to Gennep’s theory of ritual process as a tripartite structure of liminal phases, most social activities involving a “change of position” move through the stages of separation, transition and incorporation. Moving beyond Gennep’s emphasis on binary oppositions, Turner scrutinizes the transition processes undergone by those in the “threshold” or “in-between” positions, and develops a broader theory of “liminality” (limen means “threshold”) and communitas. In The Ritual Process, Turner asserts that the rite of transition involves diverse marginal communities (communitas) rather than the dominant community (the whole society): for example, it is only young boys at the time of puberty who undergo the initiation into “manhood.” Turner’s works on communitas and ritual process presuppose an ambiguous space existing between the preliminal and postliminal status, one which subverts earlier (and later) binary discriminations. In her Song of Solomon, Morrison clashes the values of the black and white communities; it is in the “grey” (or liminal) area in-between that the male protagonist, Milkman Dead, finds himself, and commences to “search for” his (black) ancestry. The narrative journey depicted in Milkman’s journal exemplifies the three stages of liminality as seen through Gennep’s and Turner’s perspectives. In the process of searching for his ancestry, Milkman is affected by the people around him; each of them can be seen as corresponding to a “minority element” within the larger society, and thus can be interpreted in terms of Turner’s theory of communitas; they also can be seen as embodying what Turner calls the “the powers of the weak” for they reduce Milkman to the level of common humanity and mortality. The nature of his moves from one position or level to another, then, on what is in effect a quest for his own self-identity, suggests a reading of the novel in terms of Gennep’s and Turner’s theories. This reading sees Milkman as being forced to undergo passage through a state of liminality in order to complete his rite of initiation.