Comment by mistersquid
5 hours ago
> I'm currently in Paris so I've seen a ton of metro stations recently and really, unless you arrived in the dead of night so that you could snap an empty photo like the one in the article, there's nothing much liminal about them.
Liminal does not mean minimal. It means in-between, neither here nor there but in the interstices, transitional.
Dictionary.app in macOS Sequoia defines (with example usage) "liminal" as
> 1 occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold: I was in the liminal space between past and present | the paintings in this exhibition are the result of recent investigation into liminal states.
> 2 relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process: that liminal period when a child is old enough to begin following basic rules but is still too young to do so consistently.
By definition, metro stations are liminal spaces, as are airports, airlocks, highways, and most every transit station.
"Language as she is spoke" is very often at odds with literal dictionary definitions. So you're right that a liminal space is a transitional space, and that a metro is by definition that. But linimal aesthetic is different, especially as has recently become popular. It means a space that gives you that feeling of being between, of emptiness, introspection. A metro station absolutely does not have this aesthetic, except maybe at some mysterious hour where there's no one using it (and I've used them at both closing and opening times, they're never empty).
> But linimal aesthetic is different, especially as has recently become popular.
Your articulation of a liminal aesthetic hits upon the tension inherit in the word “liminal”.
By definition “liminal” signals “in between” which connotes an unsettledness or indeterminacy, or what in other realms is called the uncanny. This liminal aesthetic, at its core, is shot through with a sense of the uncanny, and empty devoid spaces where normally there is a lot of traffic convey this aesthetic clearly and succinctly.
Thank you for drawing this distinction.
My intent when referring to the denotation of “liminal” was to remind that even familiar places, such as bustling train stations and busy airport terminals, are also liminal spaces even if they don’t conform to current representations of the liminal _aesthetic_. By preserving the denotation of the word “liminal”, we can defamiliarize such spaces and recover (or emphasize) their liminality.
All of which is the message of art like Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports”. Who doesn’t appreciate the defamiliarization of our “mundane” traversals of the realms we inhabit?
Good luck preserving the meaning of words. Words have no meaning outside how people use them to express ideas. Words can and do change to mean different things, or even 'literally' the opposite of themselves.
The very usage you bring up is a whimsical metaphorical one: "I was in the liminal space between past and present". We are all in this liminal space because we are all trapped between the past and the present.
Like many things throughout history, I strongly suspect it means whatever the author means.