Gambetti 101s a matter of course, the grandiose problem of modernity and of A
politics after Auschwitz cannot be treated lightly. I will limit myself here to
making the following humble remarks in order to introduce a theoretical
perspective that, when compared to the totalizing evenness of disheart-
ened narratives, is more likely to take into account the various examples
of collective action and self-determination that still continue to subvert
power structures, produce cracks in ideological boundaries, or disturb the
functionalist universe of consumer capitalist society.
s against the totalizing apprehension of earlier critical theo-A
rists, Arendt notwithstanding, new approaches to power draw a slightly
less ominous picture of patterns of domination and subjugation. More
often than not, they point to the ambiguity of dominant structures
and underline the ever-present possibility of resistance. One particular
idea in the now ample literature on power structures is that of liminal-
ity, as stated above. According to Turner, liminality is a “state of being
in between successive participations in social milieux dominated by
social considerations, whether formal or unformalized.”^25 This condi-
tion of being unqualified, undetermined and unbound indisputably car-
ries a Heideggerian underpinning of groundlessness. But Turner’s way of
appropriating Heidegger is peculiar in that liminality becomes a sphere of
action rather than an ontological “archmodality.”^26 Arising from human
processes, liminal situations or periods are actually nothing but “undif-
ferentiated, equalitarian, direct and nonrational (though not irrational)”^27
relationships that do not fit readily into available patterns of behavior.
What Turner has to say about societies in general is in a way contained in
the microlevel encounter with strangers that defines a relation as public
instead of intimate or private.
s such, liminality is well supplied with some of the conceptual A
components of the public sphere and particularly with what John Austin
calls the “performative.” By way of example, it lends itself to the analysis
of relationships that fall outside the kinship-based realm of the private
or the rule-governed field of institutions. This is an egalitarian moment
because in the public domain exchange is uncertain and ambiguous in
contradistinction to the space of the household where kinship is regulated
by hierarchical structures. Göle, for instance, uses the notion of liminal-
ity to highlight the fractured identity of Muslim women in cosmopolitan