Liminality and other things to fear

Today's quote to close Banned Books Week says:

The "inbetweenness," the liminal state adolescents are in while they are changing from children to adults, may also frighten us. Turner and van Gennep believed that "when individuals or groups are in a liminal state of suspension, separated from their previous condition, and not yet incorporated into their new one, they present a threat to themselves and to the entire group... Liminality does occasion danger and fear" (Daly 71). Certainly that is how teenagers are often viewed. And their literature, interestingly enough, must also frequently occasion feelings of danger and fear, since so many YA titles appear on the ALA list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books"-
Gauthier, Gail. “Whose Community? Where Is the ‘YA’ in YA Literature?” The English Journal 91.6 (2002) : 70-76

Liminality -margin or limen- is a concept van Gennep, an ethnographer, develops in Rites of Passage. It goes about how that state of otherness and need of identification with a community is challanged when going from child to adult.

From Google Books:

Van Gennep was the first observer of human behaviour to note that the ritual ceremonies that accompany the landmarks of human life differ only in detail from one culture to another, and that they are in essence universal. Originally published in English in 1960.

It can be linked to fandom and crowd phenomena when search for identity and similarity between individuals lacks spontaneos association or comminitas, as Turner develops when analizing rituals.

More papers to read!