Liminality and Critical Event Studies: Borders, Boundaries, and Contestation 303040255X, 9783030402556

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Liminality and Critical Event Studies Borders, Boundaries, and Contestation Edited by Ian R. Lamond · Jonathan Moss

Liminality and Critical Event Studies

Ian R. Lamond · Jonathan Moss Editors

Liminality and Critical Event Studies Borders, Boundaries, and Contestation

Editors Ian R. Lamond School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management Leeds Beckett University Leeds, UK

Jonathan Moss School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management Leeds Beckett University Leeds, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-40255-6 ISBN 978-3-030-40256-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To all my friends in Brazil—Thank you CB (Apesar de Você): Let us not be misled To those close, far away and in-between, “We live forever, forever in the stars”.

Contents

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Introduction Ian R. Lamond and Jonathan Moss

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Part I Overtures 2

What Is Liminality in Critical Event Studies Research? Ian R. Lamond and Jonathan Moss

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Liminality, Subjectivity, and Aesthetics in Event Management Studies Peter Vlachos

Part II 4

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Oratorios

Liminality and Event Design: Liminal Space Design for Sport Events Ashley Garlick and Nazia (Naz) Ali The Privilege of Subversion Barbara Grabher

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CONTENTS

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Searching for Sites of Liminality in Giga-Events Seth I. Kirby and Michael B. Duignan

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From Everyday Life into the Liminoid and Back Again Angela Wichmann

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Experiencing Abstraction: On Mega-Events, Liminality, and Resistance Andrea Pavoni

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‘Sit in the Shadows’: The Black Body as American Event Samuel B. Bernstein, Zachary T. Smith and Jeffrey Montez de Oca Double Liminality: Fado Events and Tourism Geoff Holloway

Part III 11

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Counterpoints

Liminality and Ritual Order: Italy’s National Elections of 2018 Sebastiano Citroni and Gianmarco Navarini

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Events of Dissent, Events of the Self Rasul A. Mowatt

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Liminality and Activism: Conceptualising Unconventional Political Participation in Romania Ruxandra Gubernat and Henry P. Rammelt

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Crowds, Events, Enaction: Liminal Politics at the Chattri Memorial Susan L. T. Ashley

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Egyptian Revolutionary Art Through a Liminal Framework Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso

Index

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Notes on contributors

Nazia (Naz) Ali is Programme Leader for M.Sc. Sports Management at the University of East London, England, United Kingdom. She is a graduate in Sociology from Middlesex University; she received her Ph.D. from the University of Bedfordshire in Tourism Studies. Naz has published in areas of event design, identity, migration, and researcher reflexivity. She has recently become interested in the role of sport spectatorship in empowering and engaging young people. Susan L. T. Ashley is Senior Lecturer of Arts in the M.A. programme, Creative and Culture Resources Management, and AHRC Leadership Fellow in (Multi) Cultural Heritage at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. She is a cultural studies scholar who has published widely, including the monograph A Museum in Public with Routledge and the edited volume Diverse Spaces: Identity, Heritage and Community in Canadian Public Culture. She has 20 years of experience working in programming and events management for culture and heritage sites across Canada. Samuel B. Bernstein is a doctoral student with comprehensive research interests in sport and social justice, the cultural and political economy of sport, and the articulations of race, class, and gender in sporting spaces. His past research has focused on the role of public funding in professional sport and the ethics and practice of qualitative research in public

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spaces. His doctoral dissertation concerns the emergence of eSports and its present and future place in college sport. Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso is a Ph.D. graduate of the Centre for Media Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Bseiso has worked for the United Nations (UN-Habitat and UNHCR), the Palestine Land Society, as well as the American University of Kuwait. Bseiso currently works as an adjunct faculty member in the Mass Communications Department at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. Sebastiano Citroni is currently Adjunct Professor of Sociology of Politics in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at University of Milano-Bicocca, where he was also a Post-doc Researcher. His main researches focus on Civil Society & Civic Action; Social Theory & Ethnography; Space & Society; and Conflict & Participation. His last book (2015) is Inclusive Togetherness. A Comparative Ethnography of Cultural Associations (La Scuola). Michael B. Duignan is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Coventry Business School, Coventry University, UK. Mike takes a strategic, management and organisational perspective on the practices of the visitor economy, field configuring events and festivals. He examines, conceptually and empirically, how these practices contribute to—and impact on—the short- and longer-term planning and development of regions and urban communities, and specifically on entrepreneurs, micro and small business sustainability and survival. Mike has researched and published on a range of different cultural and sporting events, from the Olympics (London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020), right through to regional sporting events like the Cambridge Half Marathon (2016, 2017, 2018) and cultural festivals (e.g. EAT Cambridge, e-Luminate Festival). Ashley Garlick is a Senior Lecturer in Event Management at the University of West London. He teaches the sociology of planned events, which includes the importance of ritual and liminality within celebratory event spaces. He has an undergraduate degree in International Hospitality Management from Bournemouth University, and a master’s degree in Management from London Metropolitan University.

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Barbara Grabher is an anthropologist working in the intersections of critical event studies and gender studies. With a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural and Social Anthropology (University of Vienna) and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies (University of Granada and Utrecht University), she is a Marie Curie Research Fellow currently conducting her Ph.D. research project ‘Gendering Cities of Culture’ in the Horizon 2020 GRACE project at University of Hull. Ruxandra Gubernat a Bucharest-based researcher and independent filmmaker, Ruxandra Gubernat holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Paris Nanterre and an M.A. in Media Sociology from ENS Lyon. At the same time, she studied sociology and philosophy of film, at the Institute for Political Studies in Lyon. Ruxandra is the codirector of the documentary movie Portavoce—The Romanian Culture of Protest. Geoff Holloway was State Secretary of the world’s first Green party, the United Tasmania Group (UTG), 1974–1977 and again since revival of UTG three years ago. Geoff has a Ph.D. (sociology), specialising in social movements, health, and social research methods; poet (4 books published); climber; and traveller—two years in Chilean & Argentinean Patagonia, but also Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil, three times recently to Lisbon and twice to Cabo Verde. Seth I. Kirby is a Lecturer in Sport and Leisure Management in the School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, UK. His research interests are broad and include topics such as events, sports management, legacy, regeneration, leveraging and sustainability. Seth’s research activity is linked to exploring critical issues and perspectives in events and sports, with a particular focus on mega-sporting event hosting communities. Ian R. Lamond is a Senior Lecturer in Event Studies at Leeds Beckett University. His interests range from events of dissent, and the eventalisation of the political, to the commodification of death and graphic storytelling. His other works include two edited collections; Protests and Events, with Karl Spracklen (2015) and Critical Event Studies: Approaches to Research, with Louise Platt (2016), and two co-authored monographs; Critical Event Studies, with Karl Spracklen (2016) and a

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Palgrave Pivot on the 2015 UK election and 2016 EU Referendum with Chelsea Reid (2017), subtitled ‘Towards a Democracy of the Spectacle’. He is considered one of the pioneers of critical event studies as a conceptual approach. Jeffrey Montez de Oca is the founding director of the Center for the Critical Study of Sport at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. He authored Doping in Elite Sports: Voices of French Sportspeople and Their Doctors, 1950s–2010 (Routledge, 2018) and Discipline & Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life During the Cold War (Rutgers UP, 2013) that won the 2014 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Outstanding Book Award. Jonathan Moss is a Senior Lecturer at Leeds Beckett University in the School of events, Tourism and Hospitality management. His Ph.D. explored music festival experience using a phenomenological psychology approach as a means of situating the experience in the ideographic Life world of the attendees. He is currently writing two papers: one regarding the use of descriptive experience sampling methods in event studies research and the other is considering how neurophenomenology can contribute to our understanding of collective and shared emotions at events. Rasul A. Mowatt is an Associate Professor in the Departments of American Studies in the College of Arts + Science and Recreation, Park, and Tourism Studies within the School of Public Health—Bloomington, Indiana University. Focus areas: social justice, leisure studies, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy. Published work: legacy of Tamir Rice in Leisure Sciences, viewing mediated images of Black death in Biography and failures of public participation in mega-event planning in Loisir et Société. Gianmarco Navarini is Full Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Sociology and Social Research, Italy. His research activities and writings have mainly centred around three areas: micro–macro ritual forms of power, boundaries’ places and in-between social practices, body language, and communities of practice in the fields of taste, passion, and sport. Current ethnographic research include political change on the cheer in the stadium, the social organisation of the sensory experience in wine tasting, the transition to Italian liminal politics.

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Andrea Pavoni is post-doctoral researcher at DINAMIA’CET, University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal. His research explores the relation between materiality, normativity, and the urban from various interdisciplinary angles. He is co-editor of the Law and the Senses Series (Westminster University Press) and associate editor at Lo Squaderno, Explorations in Space and Society. His book, Controlling Urban Events. Law, Ethics and the Material, is out with Routledge. Henry P. Rammelt a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Lyon. He is a research assistant at Science Po (Paris) and visiting professor at SNSPA Bucharest. His research focusses on social movements and civil society in Eastern Europe. His latest book, Activistes Protestataires en Hongrie et Roumanie was published by l’Harmattan (Paris) in 2018. He is the co-director of the documentary movie Portavoce—The Romanian Culture of Protest. Zachary T. Smith is a doctoral student in Sport Studies at the University of Tennessee where he is the recipient of a Tennessee Fellowship for Graduate Excellence. His research interests occur at the nexus of physical culture and religion, with a particular focus on religious athleticisms in the Unites States. He also serves as the graduate assistant for the Center for the Study of Sport and Religion at University of Tennessee. Peter Vlachos is Principal Lecturer specialising in live event management at the University of Greenwich, London, UK, where he is active in research, teaching, and consultancy projects. He designed and led the M.A. International Events Management degree. His interests include cultural events and urban development, the hybridization of the event experience through digital technology, and the study of events as socially lived phenomena. He was one the of the university’s main spokespeople during the London 2012 Olympic Games. Angela Wichmann is a Lecturer in qualitative research, business psychology, and sport, tourism, and event studies at Hochschule Fresenius University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Brighton, UK. Prior to moving into academia, she worked in several positions in hospitality, tourism, and the sports event industry. Her research interests relate to the sociology of sport and gymnastics, as well as sports events and sports tourism.

List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 12.1

Fig. 12.2

Fig. 12.3

Fig. 12.4

Extended Festival–Event–Leverage Complex (Adapted from Duignan et al., 2018) “My Kind of Town”, taken during the protests to the 2012 NATO Summit that occurred in Chicago, Illinois. Photograph taken by James Watkins of Jim Watkins Photography (Permission given by the photographer) “Woman Taking Bonfire Selfie”, taken after the 2014 World Series. Photograph taken by Matthew Almon Roth. Image made available by Wikipedia Commons and the file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewalmonroth/1566 2218331/) The poster reads: “I am because we are”. A picture of Rio de Janeiro’s city councilor Marielle Franco, 38, who was shot dead, is seen outside the city council chamber in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 15, 2018. Photograph: REUTERS/Pilar Olivares (Permission given by the photographer) Mass Surveillance. Anonymous wall art. Attribution not known. Photograph taken by the author

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Fig. 12.5

Fig. 14.1 Fig. 14.2

“No Justice, No Peace”, taken at the BtownJustice: Ferguson Action National Day of Resistance on December 13, 2014, Bloomington, Indiana. Photograph taken by Robert Charles Stoffer (Permission given by the photographer) Chattri Indian Memorial site north of Brighton on the Sussex Downs. Photo by author Participants converge on the steps of the Memorial for a final group shot, June 2013. Photo by the author

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Ian R. Lamond and Jonathan Moss

Although the academic study of events is a relatively young field it is currently going through an intense period of evolution and development. Critical approaches to the analysis and critique of events (Sometimes referred to as critical event studies, or CES) have emerged as part of a movement that seeks to radically reconceptualise event studies through seeking to examine and articulate the philosophical foundations of the field. Rather than locating it as simply the servant of an operationally dominated event management, it also champions strong ties with other areas of academic inquiry, such as cultural studies, leisure theory, the sociology of sport, media studies, political sociology, and philosophy (Moufakkir & Pernecky, 2014; Spracklen & Lamond, 2016). These developments are producing a growing interest in conceptual inquiry within event studies theory; drawing in academics from other fields of scholarship while encouraging event studies researchers to consider, ever more widely, how their work fits into a richer spectrum of the social

I. R. Lamond (B) · J. Moss School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. Moss e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_1

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sciences and humanities. Over the last five years the literature associated with these developments has grown significantly (e.g. Finkel, Sharp, & Sweeney, 2018; Lamond & Platt, 2016; Moufakkir & Pernecky, 2014; Pavoni, 2017; Roche, 2017; Walters & Jepson, 2019); however, there has, as yet, been no text within event studies, or CES, that has placed the concepts of liminality and the liminoid at the very centre of its work—this book addresses that gap. Etymologically ‘liminality’ derives from the Latin Limen (singular) or Limina (plural), which referred to a threshold, a somewhat disruptive and disorientating state that marks a boundary between two phases of a ritual, which van Gennep (1960) recognised as central to our anthropological understanding of spiritual rites of passage: The pre-liminal (rites of separation), and the post liminal (rites of incorporation), where the individual is in a cultural/spiritual state of being betwixt and between one mode of being and another. It is, however, through Vitor Turner’s revisiting the concept (Turner, 1969) that it begins to become a key idea across a broader spectrum of social and cultural theory. In order to distinguish it from the associations liminal had with van Gennep’s more religiously based threshold experiences, Turner (1974) proposed the term Liminoid. But, even in these foundational studies, liminality was understood as reaching beyond the sociocultural and psycho-affective boundaries in which it can be described. Spatial elements have also always had a significant place in understanding liminal/liminoid processes. Liminoid, spaces (Lie, 2003), rituals (Thomassen, 2009), landscapes (Tufi, 2017), and experience (Szakolczai, 2015) provide us with insight into how to grasp the way the threshold and the passage form an intrinsic part of society, where play, flow, and ritual become secularly entwined as ‘…settings in which new symbols, models, and paradigms arise’ (Turner, 1974, p. 60), where ‘…the liminoid can be an independent domain of creative activity’ (ibid., p. 65). The application of these ideas to event studies theory, however, has only recently begun to surface. Patterson and Getz (2013) apply Turner’s construal of the liminal and liminoid in their discussion of the interconnectivity of leisure and event studies when they consider the production of liminal zones at events, and how liminal states are induced in event participants. ‘The liminoid’, they suggest, ‘…is associated with fun, revelry, and entertainment that occurs in a variety of leisure and event settings’ (p. 234), whereas Ziakas and Boukas (2014)

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argue that the paucity of research that considers liminality and the liminoid in events management is symptomatic of a neglect of the ‘…experiential, existential and ontological dimensions of events’ (p. 57) emergent from a lack of consideration of the role phenomenology can play in our understanding of events. ‘(T)he celebratory nature of events’, they claim ‘…can engender a liminal/liminoid space/time where people feel more comfortable, uninhibited and open to new ideas…(which) enables a sense of social bonding and camaraderie, suspending normal rules and social boundaries’ (p. 59). This connection, between revelry (Patterson & Getz, 2013) and inhibition (Ziakas & Boukas, 2014), is echoed in the association of liminality and the carnivalesque that appears in the discussion of festival space in Pielichaty (2015), the heterotopic articulation of festival and event tourism spaces (such as Tufi’s analysis of Venice), and Torres, Moreira, and Lopes’s (2018) recent consideration of why people participate in mass crowd events. Tropes resonate strongly with Foucauldian ideas of spaces of otherness (Foucault, 1986) and the spatial theories of Lefebvre. His construal of theatrical space as a space of performativity draws together the other elements of his tripartite fields of the production of space (le perçu; le conçu, le vécu), while his description of Venice ‘…where water and stone create a texture founded on reciprocal reflection [where]…everyday life and its functions are coextensive with, and utterly transformed by, a theatricality’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 74) almost frames that city as a space of pure liminality. These discussions represent part of an emerging voice within event studies, one that offers a very different pathway from the functional and commodified colonisation of ‘experience’ and ‘memory’ derived from applications of Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) analysis of the experience economy. One that encourages a deeper understanding and critical evaluation of the role of experience within events research. But what does CES add to this development? One of the central characteristics of CES is the problematisation of the referent event within event studies, arguing that all events are fundamentally contested and best understood from a perspective of multiplicity, and an outpouring of multiplicity within that multiplicity (which Badiou, 2008 [1992], might refer to as the evental). One of the primary foci of the CES project has been a consideration of the heterotopic and discourse, in a Foucauldian (2003) sense; however, recent work by the editors (Lamond, 2018; Moss, 2016) has drawn on the importance of space and time in CES research, embracing what Heidegger (2012) would refer

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to as Erfahrung (the feeling of experience) and Ereignis (event as rupture). This moves the focus of research associated with event management and event studies to allow for deeper discussions around power, authenticity, considerations of manipulation and exploitations, and the possibility of resistance. Through drawing together, in a single volume, a body of research and reflection that concentrates its attention on the liminal/liminoid from within a CES perspective, we can address the growing interest in Turner’s work within event studies, while encouraging new thought and theory generation within the field. The contributions made in this book enrich the body of knowledge within event studies while also facilitating stronger links to other disciplines, progressing event studies/CES as a truly interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary field. This edited collection brings together academics from around the world who are researching events from a multi-disciplinary perspective; placing their work within the context of Victor Turner’s (1969, 1979) theories of Ritual, Flow, Liminality, and Performance. Our objective, through the breadth and diversity of their inquiry and reflection, is to conceptually explore the relationship between the scholarly study of events and Turner’s conceptual framework, while not avoiding a prescription of application. The scope of this book is to provide an inclusive approach to a topic that is both wide-ranging and far-reaching. Structurally the book is split into three parts. Given both editors’ interest music, and our shared sense of how music can articulate a liminal state, we have given each part a title that alludes to the theme of the chapters it contains through a musical reference. The first, Overtures, is composed of two chapters; one documents a conversation between the two editors and explores our own journey into a liminal realm where we discuss our own evolving and shifting connection to the relationship between liminality and event studies. Our diverse research interests in events, Jonathan’s are mainly in music and festivals, while Ian’s are in dissent and the media representation of protest events, go on to form the umbrella themes for the other parts of the book. The purpose of the other chapter, written by Peter Vlachos, is to review and assess the ways in which the concept of ‘liminality’ informs and relates to the study and teaching of events management within higher education. First, he conceptually reflects on the aesthetic and subjective aspects of the events experience. Tensions are unpacked between the intrinsic, sensual, and at times even Bacchanalian experience of events such as social phenomena, and the instrumental,

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rational management of them. The analysis is underpinned by Turner’s (1974) notion of liminal time and liminoid spaces, theories of subjective place experience (Lefebvre, 2004; Tuan, 1977), and Debord’s (1999) idea of psychogeographic flow. Second, he argues that the localisation of event studies, particularly those in business faculties within higher education institutions, has resulted in an over-emphasis on managerial functions at the expense of the more creative and subjective elements relevant to liminality. An indicative historical survey of academic textbooks is employed, using an analysis underpinned by Foucault’s theories on the archaeology of knowledge, to illustrate the evolution of ‘events management’ as the prevailing disciplinary frame within the dominant discourse of the ‘experience economy’ (Pine & Gilmore, 1998, 1999). Teaching and research on the aesthetic and design elements of live events has thus either been abandoned to art and design faculties (who themselves have shown little interest in expanding into the events discipline), treated as a self-teachable, or easily out-sourced elements, despite their centrality to the liminal power of the event. The chapter concludes with a call for a more unified, multi-disciplinary, and subjectivist approach to the field of event studies. Each of the remaining sections begins with a short introduction that sets out the context of its focus and introduces the reader to several themes that cut across the chapters they contain. Where possible we have attempted to begin with a chapter that can, to a varying extent, act as a link between one section of the book, and the next. The second part of the book, Oratorios, addresses the liminal and liminoid in culture and cultural and sports events. We felt Oratorios gave the section a sense gravitas with which such events would resonate. There are seven chapters in this section. In Liminality and Event Design, Ashley Garlick and Nazi Ali suggest that while it has been argued that ritual has been sacrificed to give way to modern event management techniques that prioritise economic viability and stakeholder satisfaction over the ritual purpose of the event (Brown & James, 2004) they reject this argument. Instead, they propose that ritual is undergoing a new resurgence in terms of its impact on event design for sport events. The chapter contributes to existing research on the symbolic relationship between ritual and liminality in such liminoid happenings as sport events. The authors interpret the relationship between liminality and related terms associated with rituals: celebration, communitas, anti-structure, and symbols. These are further discussed in view of design strategies that promote drama (i.e.

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dramaturgy), arousal of the senses (i.e. atmospherics), and interactivity (i.e. servicescapes). It is asserted that, while ritual and liminality is far from extinct, there is an increasing importance for professional (sport) event organisers to show a greater understanding of how it should inform their creative process. This would enable them to execute high-quality events that provide memorable experiences. The chapter demonstrates that liminality can inform event design and is a fundamental concept that must be considered for an event to be successful. Barbara Grabher, in the chapter that follows, reads Turner’s theory of liminality in the context of queer political aspirations of LGBT-themed events. Grabher draws on Turner’s concept in the light of the widely discussed transformative potential of event and festivals. Conceptually, liminality suggests a suspension of hegemonic structures and explorations of alternative models of living. Through ethnographic research practice, she studies the empirical realities of these transformative powers in the context of contemporary LGBT-themed events. The week-long event series entitled LGBT50 serves as a case study for this investigation. As a flagship project of Hull’s celebration of the title UK City of Culture in 2017, LGBT50 contributes to the promised ‘365 days of transformative culture’ for the city. Based on considerations of cultural actors and visitors, Grabher argues for a nuanced understanding of the potential of liminality as regarded in the LGBT-labelled event. Her analysis suggests that subversive, liminal temporalities continue to be a privilege. Giga-events, according to Kirby and Duignan, disrupt urban communities and business environments rendering vulnerable social groups, particularly host communities of micro and small businesses, marginalised, invisible, and unable to leverage certain economic benefits. In their chapter they focus on one specific economic benefit occurring within a specific time period: the opportunities and challenges associated with event visitor economies during the ‘live staging’ period between the Olympic Games Opening and Closing Ceremony. Giga-events are planned, organised, and managed in such a way that they intentionally redirect visitor economic consumption away from small business communities and towards official sites of corporate consumption. These neoliberal outcomes must be combated and interrupted if more marginal social groups, like those residing in host communities, are to optimise the full economic potential of giga-events. Using this latent, but increasingly politicised critique of large-scale events to approach this challenge, Kirby and Duignan draw on perspectives, practices, and concepts related to the

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burgeoning accounts of liminality. Liminality, namely, liminal thinking, liminal spaces, and the creation of liminoidal event spaces, inherently refers to the development of new creative spaces of disruption. As such, they frame such thinking as a way to disrupt and seek to provide a potential antidote to the neoliberal practices of giga-events that inevitably lead to the over-riding of local interests, in favour of external, contingent global demands of more visible, powerful stakeholders in the melee of Olympic planning. By mapping out the different sites where liminality may be fostered across host cities, they propose different conceptual and practical ways host communities, policy-makers, event organisers, and managers can open up new emancipatory spaces ‘betwixt and inbetween’. Divergent forms of liminal space have been overlaid across ‘Live Sites’ to illustrate the ways in which vulnerable social groups may be able to leverage opportunities related to event visitor economies. Angela Wichmann’s chapter on the transportation processes in the World Gymnaestrada is informed by the work of Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, and other scholars in the field. The chapter investigates the transportation process participants in an international, noncompetitive sports event perceive between their ordinary lives and the liminoid event experience. While liminal rituals lead to transformations and result in permanent changes, in a liminoid setting, such as a sports event, people experience temporary modifications, while being transported out of, and back to, ordinary life. Against the backdrop of these considerations, the chapter explores how participants in the purely noncompetitive, official Gymnastics for All world event, the World Gymnaestrada, perceive and experience the transportation process from their ordinary life into the liminoid setting, as well as back again. Drawing on an ethnographic research approach, the chapter argues that the awareness of the liminoid nature of the event, with its pre- and post-liminoid stage, accompanies the way the event is perceived and experienced. In doing so, the chapter contributes to advance our understanding of the extent to which the notion of liminality provides insight into the way an international, recurring sports event is experienced. The following two chapters connect sports events with liminality and resistance. Andrea Pavoni explores the notion of liminality vis-à-vis mega events (MEs) and their role in the ‘shock and awe’ mechanism of neoliberal urbanisation. While van Gennep, Turner, and Szakolczai discuss liminality in relation to its shared experience: how this is produced, controlled, undergone, and digested; Pavoni proposes to understand MEs as opening a liminality which remains un-experienced. In this sense, MEs are

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not simply phenomenologically liminoid (in Turner’s sense of the word), but ontologically liminal space-times through which neoliberal urbanisation contradictorily occurs. This is consistent with Jameson’s (2013) definition of modernity as characterised by a disjunction between experience and abstraction. Not the confusing experience of a liquefaction that is not dialectically resolved into order then, modern liminality is to be understood as the aesthetic fracture between experience and the forces that order the conditions of experience itself. In this sense, the political task of investigating, dissecting, and criticising urban capitalism must be completed by an eminently aesthetic one: not the romantic attempt to restore an authentic experience of communitas against neoliberal eventification, but that of making experienceable, and thus amenable to action, those elusive forces, diagrams, and rhythms that shape our being-in-the-world. Bernstein, Smith, and Monez de Orca’s focus is on the taking a knee protest. On August 14, 2016, Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers remained seated during the National Anthem and the United States did not hear the sound. It would take another two weeks before his silence became an event. Since then, Kaepernick’s call for the legitimation of the Black body within US society has sparked a multiplicity of reactions. In turn, he has received a variety of support while also attracting the ire of paternalistic nationalists masquerading as patriotic Americans. Most notably, he became the figurative ‘whipping boy’ for the entertainer who would soon become the President of the United States. To draw out the significance of Kaepernick’s kneeling body as an event, they deploy Badiou’s (2007 [1998]) three subjective response categories in order to create a typology for interrogating the popular civil discourses inscribed onto Kaepernick’s body. Their analysis looks at a range of public responses to Kaepernick’s kneeling body to chart the various faithful, reactionary, and obscure subject positions. These responses highlight one way that the Black body is subject to the authority of the (US) nation in the form of state-sanctioned violence, while deprived of the rights the nation provides its citizens. In this instance, people of color are not imagined as part of the body politic. Black bodies are subject to P olitical power but deprived of political power, indicating an experience of American citizenry that is of a liminal kind (Thomassen, 2009). Through this analysis, Bernstein, Smith, and Monez de Orca show how excavating embodied politics, and looking at the reverberations at the nexus of the sport-nation complex, allows us to see the affinities that work across the rhapsodic denigration of Colin Kaepernick’s [Black] body, and, turning to future analysis, the

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veneration of [White] bodies like Nate Boyer and Pittsburgh Steelers’ tackle Alejandro Villanueva. We end this section, musically, with Geoff Holloway’s chapter on the double liminality of fado events and tourism. Tourism and the traditional Portuguese music of fado, he argues, can be understood as two different, but inter-dependent, forms of liminality. This has particular consequences for the interactions and understandings between tourists and fadistas; and while both sets of actors in this ‘theatre’ or ‘performance’ are in the same location or liminoid space, temporarily, they come from quite different social places. This chapter is an exploration of double liminality—that of tourists and fadistas (singers of fado)—following three visits to Lisboa (2014, 2016, and 2018), including four weeks of intensive, participant observation research in 2018. While there is nothing new about analysing tourists as liminal beings, applying the same concept to fadistas is new. The liminal characteristics of these two sets of ‘actors’ make for interesting ‘theatre’ or performance. The concept of ‘flow’ also applies to fado performances. After reading a draft of this chapter one fadista commented that, ‘I connect to both concepts of flow and liminality … (and) for the liminality to happen simultaneously on both sides and to happen with the same intensity… and I have felt it many times, and in many ways’. Our third section of the book, Counterpoints, draws on what is an area of increasing interest within CES research, examining activism and dissent through a critical events lens. The musical term Counterpoint conveys some of the contestation and juxtaposition examined in the chapter in this part. In their chapter on Italy’s national elections of 2018, Citroni and Navarini provide a summary of the relationship between order and liminality and show how this analytical framework facilitates a better understanding of the consolidation of ‘populist’ political forces and their incorporation in Italy’s government. The authors focus on the campaigning prior to the Italian elections of 2018 and their immediate aftermath, a period when the frameworks of ritual order and liminality overlapped; they draw attention to the emergence of threshold zones of political discourse and practice that gradually moved from the periphery to the ‘symbolic centre’. This process involved subversion of the established rules and changes to the symbols of social ties, such as representations of national cohesion and ‘the other’, that normally affect the reproduction of community power. For Rasul Mowatt, it is the act of dissent, and protest as event, that constitute strategies that are often actualised in public spaces.

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They in turn work as a means to raise societal issues by creating personal and public awareness, by challenging institutional and state power, but also by establishing a collective identity comprised of the individuals represented in their organisation and momentary existence. But who and what is the individual in the midst of these actions and events? The aim of his chapter is to interrogate the online emergence of images, oftentimes uploaded by individuals at protest events, and how they convey a liminal confluence of (1) digital narcissism; (2) memory work; (3) civic or ‘guerilla’ journalism; and (4) surveillance. The emphasis here is on how the use of these images may represent the liminal space of transforming individual complying citizens to dissident and political actors, as well as the liminality of spectator’s understanding of the issues that are being raised. Ultimately, the liminality of actors in dissent and protest, as well as the liminality of viewers of those images, opens the doorway for actors and spectators to become unintended agents of repression, which in turn is found to be an exemplar of the prevalence of governmentality. It is the conceptualisation of non-conventional political participation that forms the focus of attention in Gubernat and Rammelt’s chapter. Romanian society experienced a transition from an apathetic political culture to one in which protest became a constant element in the socio-political arena. Gubernat and Rammelt provide an analysis of the effects of regime transformation, cultural consumption, and social media activism on protest participation in Romania. These factors are analysed as liminal stages in the passage from non-involved individuals to politically active citizens. In order to do that they make use of Turner’s (1969, 1974) concept of liminality, which proves to be particularly valuable for understanding societies that undergo social and cultural transitions. They go on to explain this paradigm shift as one bound to the transition state of participants, rather than one rooted in structural transformation. The chapter concludes that the regime changes in Eastern Europe provoked an almost permanent liminal situation, one between a new set of rules and the old order, a situation without any resolution being attained. They argue that such an ‘in-betweenness’ is one of the main reasons for which recent protests in Romania do not deliver a fundamental critique of existing configurations of power, but rather embrace models of Western liberal democracy. In contrast, Susan Ashley’s chapter considers the gentle, yet powerful, form liminal politics can take when articulated through an act of community memorialisation. As she suggests, geographers point out the affective

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presence and radical potential of crowds or publics in liminal spaces, calling such communal acts the reanimation of anarchistic sensibilities in a politics of direct action (Springer, 2014). However, such acts do not only lie in large public spectacles of protest, but also in shared community actions located in the everyday. Her chapter addresses one such activity, where memorialising and heritage-making by an affective crowd asserted a postcolonial politics. The Chattri Memorial is an isolated and ethereal space of remembrance on a remote spot near Brighton, UK. The memorial was built in 1921 to mark Indian soldiers who fought during the First World War. This chapter explores the ways that a heterogeneous community of local veterans, Indian organisations, and onlookers from mixed origins performed a horizontal politics through an intensely experienced crowd event. It engages participants’ affective event-making as conscious ‘past-presencing’ (Macdonald, 2013), and analyses how their annual acts of presencing in this space constitutes the enaction of citizenship (Isin, 2008). The communal rite of memorialising was a political event for witnessing, belonging, and gaining recognition, but also for making conscious interventions over the racialising discourses that are a fact of life for participants. Our final chapter, written by Rounwah Bseiso, considers the revolutionary art that appeared during the uprisings that took place in Egypt in 2011. In her chapter, she seeks to undertake a critical interrogation of popular understandings of Egyptian revolutionary art by historically grounding these understandings within the temporality of the Egyptian revolution. Temporality is understood here through the framework of liminality (introduced by Arnold van Gennep and later developed by Victor Turner), a framework that helps us address the Egyptian revolution as a period of liminal time characterised by in-betweenness, whereby the normative order has been momentarily suspended and essentially turned upside down to give space for a new order, new narratives, and new ideas to emerge. The chapter illustrates the ways in which different moments of the historical event of the Egyptian revolution produced new liminal moments that demanded different artistic strategies and responses, which informed how the art producers interviewed and perceived their understandings of art and their role in its creation.

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References Badiou, A. (2007 [1988]). Being and event (F. Oliver, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. Badiou, A. (2008 [1992]). Conditions. London: Continuum. Brown, S., & James, J. (2004). Event design and management: Ritual sacrifice. In I. Yeoman, M. Robertson, J. Ali-Knight, S. Drummond, U. McMahon-Beattie (Eds.), Festivals and events management (pp. 53–64). London: Butterworth Heinemann. Debord, G. (1999). The society of the spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). New York: Zone Books. Finkel, R., Sharp, B., & Sweeney, M. (Eds.). (2018). Accessibility, inclusion, and diversity in critical event studies. Abingdon: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces (J. Miskowiec, Trans.). Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Foucault, M. (2003). The archaeology of knowledge. Abingdon: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (2012). The event (R. Rojcewicz, Trans.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Isin, E. F. (Ed.). (2008). Recasting the social in citizenship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Jameson, F. (2013). A singular modernity: Essay on the ontology of the present. London: Verso. Lamond, I. R. (2018). The challenge of articulating human rights at an LGBT ‘mega-event’: A personal reflection on Sao Paulo Pride 2017. Leisure Studies, 37 (1), 36–48. Lamond, I. R., & Platt, L. (Eds.). (2016). Critical event studies: Approaches to research. London: Palgrave. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life (S. Elden & G. Moore, Trans.). London: Continuum. Lie, R. (2003). Spaces of intercultural communication: An interdisciplinary introduction to communication, culture and globalizing/localizing identities. New York: Hampton Press. Macdonald, S. (2013). Memorylands: Heritage and identity in Europe today. Abingdon: Routledge. Moss, J. (2016). Experience sampling methods in critical event studies: Theory and practice. In I. R. Lamond & L. Platt (Eds.), Critical event studies: Approaches to research (pp. 253–275). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Moufakkir, O., & Pernecky, T. (Eds.). (2014). Ideological, social and cultural aspects of events. Wallingford: CAB International. Patterson, I., & Getz, D. (2013). At the nexus of leisure and event studies. Event Management, 17 (3), 227–240.

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Pavoni, A. (2017). Controlling urban events: Law, ethics and the material (Space, materiality and the normative). Abingdon: Routledge. Pielichaty, H. (2015). Festival space: Gender, liminality and the carnivalesque. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 6(3), 235–250. Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1998). Welcome to the experience economy. Harvard Business Review, 76, 97–105. Pine, B. J., II, & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy: Work is theatre & every business a stage. Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. Roche, M. (2017). Mega-events and social change: Spectacle, legacy and public culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Spracklen, K., & Lamond, I. R. (2016). Critical event studies. Abingdon: Routledge. Springer, S. (2014). For anarcho-geography! Or, bare-knuckle boxing as the world burns. Dialogues in Human Geography, 4(3), 297–310. Szakolczai, A. (2015). The theatricalisation of the social: Problematising the public sphere. Cultural Sociology, 9(2), 220–239. Thomassen, B. (2009). The uses and meanings of liminality. International Political Anthropology, 2(1), 5–27. Torres, E. C., Moreira, S., & Lopes, R. C. (2018). Understanding how and why people participate in crowd events. Social Science Information, 57 (2), 304–321. Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experiences. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tufi, S. (2017). Liminality, heterotopic sites, and the linguistic landscape. Linguistic Landscape, 3(1), 78–99. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Turner, V. (1974). Liminal to liminoid, in play, flow, and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. Rice Institute Pamphlet-Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92. Turner, V. (1979). Frame, flow and reflection: Ritual and drama as public liminality. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 6(4), 465–499. van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Walters, T., & Jepson, A. (Eds.). (2019). Marginalisation and events. Abingdon: Routledge. Ziakas, V., & Boukas, N. (2014). Contextualizing phenomenology in event management research: Deciphering the meaning of event experiences. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 5(1), 56–73.

PART I

Overtures

CHAPTER 2

What Is Liminality in Critical Event Studies Research? Ian R. Lamond and Jonathan Moss

The purpose of doing this dialogic chapter is to open the book with a discussion. One of the drivers for the current volume has been to draw together people who think about and use liminality within event studies in different ways. We are presenting a collection that has contributions from around the world, with perspectives that don’t always agree with each other’s take on the concept; and that, in our view, is exciting. That diversity is also present between us, as an editorial team. Whilst we both share a number of common interests and our different approaches to the field of event studies resonate really well, we thought it would be interesting to share, through an informal conversation, something that illustrates where our perspectives cohere and where they diverge. By adopting the

J. Moss had contributed to this chapter along with E. Wood. I. R. Lamond (B) · J. Moss School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. Moss e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_2

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model of an informal chat that was then documented we felt that the ideas would emerge more organically and that it would be a more interesting format for beginning the books journey. This does mean that the chapter is more chaotic and less structured than a traditional book chapter but, hopefully, because it is less formal and more organic, readers will be able to engage with the ideas in different ways. As we explore and challenge ourselves in our understandings of liminality, within critical event studies, others may find resonances and points of divergence in ways that a traditional academic book chapter or journal paper may not have enabled. We are very grateful to our colleague, Prof. Emma Wood, who, in our humble opinion, courageously agreed to chair our sparring. Her endeavours to keep us on track were little short of heroic. We have not put a conclusion to this chapter. One of the points we both cohered around was our shared distrust of conclusions, wanting the chapter to also exhibit some of the characteristics of being betwixt and between. Though not exhaustive, we have covered a lot of elements of liminality in our conversation. An important thing to reflect upon is the complexity of the liminal and liminoid, and where, when and how it is used. We both felt that the complexity of the concept was both its greatest weakness and its profoundest strength, and that whilst it may suggest a ubiquity it is also a fascinating place to explore and is a valuable tool through which to articulate the experience of being-in-the-world. Neither of us feel expert in the areas we are discussing, but we both hope you find our shared journey, misinterpretations and all, interesting and engaging. One of the motifs that formed the stimulus for the book was the comment of Wittgenstein when, in the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1952), he says: ‘…problems arise when language goes on holiday’ (p. 38). We wanted the book to be a space where event scholars, with a critical inclination, would be permitted to go on an interesting holiday, sharing some of their holiday snaps to see if others would be interested in going there themselves. Emma Wood (EW): So, tell me a little bit about what liminality is then, generally, how you see it. Ian Lamond (IL): I’ll kick off then as, to an extent, I feel a relative newbie to the concept seeing as it something that hasn’t been part of my lexicon for that long and I’m likely to get lots of things really wrong about it. So, as with most things I try to think about, it’s a very cluttered thing in my head. I like the spatiality of the metaphors used by von Gennep and

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Turner when they are talking about liminality as a period of transition with the pre-liminal, liminal and post liminal phases, though obviously they cannot be separated. So, the whole thing is transitional. It’s this idea of moving, of processing, either physically, emotionally, or cognitively that I get from this idea of the liminal, and I don’t recall which uses this image, but the idea of moving from one village to another and the land between the villages not being a no-mans-land but is not one of the villages, but also part of them both, and that sense of being not quite clear where you are, or where you might end up, but having a better sense of that than where you are at the moment…and the same with where you’ve been. It’s this process, that transition, that movement. So, for me, particularly with the ideas of event that I like to play with, event as rupture, as disruption, the idea of being between in transit, in transition, seems to gel really well. Event resonates with that because event as disruption carries that uncertainty about an end point with it. Event is intangible, you’ve got to have a feel for it. So, liminality as this transition from one phase to another, from one affective state to another, from one cognitive state to another, from one physically embodied locus to another. I mean that for me is foggy, but it seems to get even foggier when I start to layer ideas of spatiality on top of that. Relational space, social space, affective space etc. Jonathan Moss (JM): I think there’s a lot in there that I find resonance with, I think I came to be aware of liminality from a slightly different perspective, in terms of looking at it from a more social psychological point of view, especially when it comes to events. Relating the individual’s perception and awareness of it and its relationship to Ashworth’s conceptualisation of Lifeworld (2003). I didn’t understand at the time but I think I’ve got a better awareness now that those leisure spaces, rather than perhaps the events that you’re talking about, in terms of people choosing to go to them, in that liminoid sense and how that then affects their world and their life but then how the liminoid space can have an effect on change and change in the individual so that they become liminal in themselves and in this way how it resonates with the field of ‘experience’ (Bruner, 1986; Jackson, 1996, 2005; Turner, 1986). As a product, or a result of attending those liminoid spaces, there’s a relationship there that I was quite interested in. As like you say there’s the relationships of space, place, emotion and how these all relate, are mashed, I like your “greyness”, the ambiguity of it, the complexity of it and how that changes the individual and their relationship to the society the live in. And societies relationship back. There is quite a lot of work

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in trying to understand the relationships between agency and structure (Giddens, 1991; Mead, 1934; Smith, Harre, & Van Langenhove, 1995) and that’s something that I’m drawn to, really. IL: I live in Blackpool and we get some early morning on sea hazes that aren’t quite fog so that you can discern what your walking towards a little better than a real fog but then because of the cold your other sense are also tingling almost with the anticipation of where your heading and for me it was a bit like that. You can’t actually see the end point, and even when you get there, because you’re in a haze you’re not really at the end but another moving on point. JM: And I think that’s the essence of the complexity for me because I sometimes get stuck in the idea that liminality doesn’t actually exist; it’s just a certain way that we explain the elements of the way we pass through time (Thomassen, 2009). You can have liminality in such a specific, small, self-related sense then it can escalate right up through countries, timescales – they can be quite quick, they can be epochs. I’ve read they can last years and years. If one word can describe something that can include one person for a short time and whole countries for years and decades, then that is just a representation of how complex it is. IL: Sure, I think that, for me that’s one of the confusions I had with the tripartite structure of it. I mean, both van Gennep (1960) and Turner (1967, 1969) talk a lot about doorways and if you go through a doorway then you’re quite clearly in a corridor, then in an office, in the supermarket and then the high street, there are quite clear areas but then, the doorway, itself, has no sensible ontological status, which connects to my conceptualisation of event as ontologically empty, so events are doorways. But then I didn’t get the pre and the post bit. Because if I go through the supermarket doorway, I’m onto the high street, I onto the high street because I’m on my way to the bus; I’m on the bus because I’m on my way home; I’m home because about to make some dinner; you know – they are all doorways…It’s a bit like the discussion about the flat earth. Well it sits on the back of four elephants, and they are on the back of a turtle, then it’s turtles all the way down…its doorways all the way down. So, I struggle with this pre and post liminal thing other than as an abstraction that’s convenient but lacks any substantial ontological status. JM: Yeah, exactly, and they (Bruner, 1986; Dilthey, 1976/2010) talk about the difference in language, about what’s the difference between what’s a moment and a period, and the ambiguity between those, and not being able to find the difference really, to define it, is something I

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struggle with a little bit. But then if you take a step back you sort of see it. You can see the processes people go through. I was trying to think of some examples of that, in terms of people, in terms of transitions, and I think emergent technologies can lead in that sometimes; the idea that those involved in them as they emerge are in liminal spaces are bound together, in a communitas (Thomassen, 2009; Turner, 1974). IL: It’s one of those ideas isn’t it that is so nuanced, so textured and layered it is really hard to talk about. I know as I talk about it, I’m immediately thinking, well OK theories of space/Lefebvre/Soja/Huyssen/Bachelard; conceptualisations of time; this idea, that idea, and all these start to crowd in; now part of me thinks, that’s fab, I’m loving this multiplicity and complexity, another part of me makes me think of Don Alhambra in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Gondoliers”. He has a song where he confronts the two Gondoliers (Giuseppe and Marco) that have become the Kings of Barataria, who have promoted everyone in their court to the highest possible rank in their professions, he sings: ‘If everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody’; if everything is a doorway, then there are no doorways – so if everything is liminal, there is no liminality. JM: Yes, yes, and that is something that I have been wrestling with. In the notes I’ve brought me – top of this list is, does liminality exist or is it just a…I mean, where is it? But then… IL: If it’s ontological empty can you really have a meaningful statement that has the form – there exists and x such that x is a liminal space? JM: …and time, and so forth. IL: None of that stops it being fascinating though. It might be a little like talking about dragons. People have detailed discussions about them, but if I was actually confronted with one, I’d seriously question my state of mind. JM: But then is that because the original theories around liminality were a way of explaining quite distinct passages within cultures and predominantly within tribal communities (Turner, 1967, 1969). Looking at key moments within the life of the tribe. It has that sense of observing something you haven’t experienced before and explaining it. In that sense I can imagine it must have felt quite apparent, to watch these specific tribal activities and processes, rites of passage and they must have seemed very distinct in that sense. Then in developing that it becomes something that is so all encompassing that it becomes less distinct and spaces of the

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liminoid evolve (Turner, 1974). So, for example, I’m playing a bass guitar on stage tonight, which I haven’t done for a long time. I feel very pre-liminal, but then I’ll then be in that moment, and when I come out the other side I will have changed as part of that process. I know that’s a very personal and small thing, but I do see it. I mean I haven’t played bass on stage for ten years and I’m quite nervous. It’s my first gig in a band I’m not in charge of, except I do feel some sense of responsibility. So, I’m feeling all those pressures on myself and all that. It’s a passage, and I’ll go through it, and people will watch me, and applaud, I’ll be part of that performance, that ‘rite of passage’ and at the end I’ll be different. Now that’s there, and I can definitely see that of myself and that journey I’ll be doing but within the complexities of the society within which it is taking place it’s invisible to a lot of people – they don’t see it that way. IL: Is it at this point we bring in Husserl (1911/1965), and say that, are we then considering liminality as something we are reducing eidetically? And that what we are trying to do, and failing – because, ultimately, it is a project that is bound to fail – is to try and discern a reality beyond that experience, beyond that eidetic reduction? JM: Are we? I think you need to expand on that a bit more; what do you mean by getting beyond the reduction? IL: So, for example, I’m holding a bottle of water in my hand, and I am reducing it to the idea of a bottle of water. I’m doing this through its feel, visually, emotionally, socially etc. etc. So, the bottle of water is constructed as an object from all that experiential stuff, but then to go beyond that and say there is some sort of Kantian thing in itself that is the bottle of water is a step I can never make, it’s that noetic/noematic thing that acts as the root of Husserl’s phenomenology, it would mean going beyond the phenomena. Are we doing the same with liminality? It’s just a question. JM: Part of me thinks the answer to that is yes, as we seem to be trying to think beyond where it sits, and we should be trying to place it in the experience of the moment, rather than something external. Seeing it for what it represents as a way of looking at the experiences that we might be talking about. IL: That doesn’t make it a useless idea, but it does mean that, maybe, we’re trying to struggle with resolving something in a way that is ultimately unresolvable.

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JM: But then are you suggesting that if you apply it to certain situations that it develops some form of understanding, that it becomes more useful. IL: I’m just speculating. I’m just wondering whether it is simply a useful device that can help us grapple with the complexity of, at one level, a set of social relations that we can never truly grasp and, at another, a cluster of personal connections to a world we are embedded within, which we can never, ultimately, get to. But because we need to try and make sense of all that stuff and ‘liminality’ gives us a way into to being able to discuss some of that. If something else comes along that proves to be more helpful then we need to move on – thanks for the foot up, but we’re now working with those new tools. JM: Sure, it’s a way of, not analysing because that sounds a bit too mechanical, but a way of being able to make sense of… perhaps. And it’s a way of, and this will date things a bit, if we think about where the UK finds itself at the moment [Brexit] it enables us to think of our context as being in the thick of a liminal time. It may not be perceived by everyone, we all have our different perspectives, and feelings, and sense of that, but as a way of standing outside and understanding what a country is going through, it provides us with a framework that allows us to put it – somewhere. IL: Sure. I mean, by accepting it is a tool of convenience what it does mean is that we can recognise is usefulness, but we do need to make sure we are using it appropriately. And it is by making sure we use it appropriately we make it more effective. JM: It’s one of those conceptual approaches you can use to try and understand where the individual, the society, the country etc., and periods of time, and depending on where you’re stood you can then apply it to what you are looking at. My view is that there are small liminalities in the everyday, with small decisions that impact the hour, day week, or you can stand and say – over a two- or three-year period you can discern those three liminal sections where you sort of filter it down, though fundamentally they are all intertwined, and overlapping. So, what is crucial is where you position yourself in relation to what you are looking at, and then apply it to that. That sort of links, bringing it back round to something I’ve recently been looking at, Turner’s (1974) paper “Liminal to liminoid in play, flow, and ritual: an essay in comparative symbology”. In it he talks interestingly about spontaneous communitas at one point. He writes:

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“…spontaneous communitas is a direct, immediate and total confrontation of human identities. A deep rather than intense style of personal interaction. It has “something magical about it” (Turner, 1974, p. 79). It talks about how people feel stronger being together, and how people are bound round those things. So, you could say that, with regards to Brexit, those who form groups around remain or leave have found stronger identities, and the more they feel different the stronger their perspectives and their opinions become. IL: Just to bring this back to dragons. JM: OK. EM: Why not, let’s keep it real Ian. IL: In Terry Pratchett’s “Guards, Guards” the only dragons that have existed are tiny, puny, swamp dragons – with a penchant for selfdestruction, if they break wind, they explode. It is only when a sufficient number of people believe in them that – ping – that large, scaly, firebreathing dragons come into existence. So, is it something like that? Are we saying that what communitas is doing is constituting an ontology? JM: Constituting an ontology…so they are…by being together they are forming their own sense of truth and perspective? Well, absolutely, that’s what I read in this. And the more you define that, and become aware of what that is, and that you all share it, the stronger that group becomes, and the more distinct it is. He goes on to talk about the strength of that and that, therefore, if something is stronger than another then it produces a resistance to it. It’s quite interesting to think in terms of liminality and that as well. Liminality always seems to be fluid and in process, but actually it can create quite strong collective identities that may not move as easily as the concept would imply; there’s a drag. IL: It creates dragons? JM: Yes – it does. There’s so much in there. There’s the vagueness that’s both positive and negative but there is also the conflicts as well, within bringing people together and seeing people within these liminal spaces and how that can then change those people…that group. It can separate as much as transform, in a transition it can make things distinct and separate. IL: This may be where some of the stuff that interests me in event studies, in that – if we are looking at that contestation, then we’re looking at clashes of ontology, of world view. Particularly within late modernity, or – to borrow from Bauman – a fluid modernity where everything is fuzzier and harder to grasp; where these ontologies are being constructed

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through communitas, and they’re clashing you create the contestation that lies at the heart of an ‘event’. EW: So, what does liminality mean for your own research then? JM: Yes, it’s interesting because, again, it’s pretty much how I came to it. Now I came to it through Csikszentmihalyi’s flow, but in the Turner essay (Turner, 1974) he draws out the difference between liminality, communitas and flow. In it he talks about the phenomenological nature of flow its own self, versus communitas’ shared joy or shared identity and that being different – though there are similarities. And that’s when I was trying to understand experience at, and liminoid spaces, at festivals, what that meant to people and how that affects people – that’s the way it came to me. Again, it’s about how those people in the festival, their bodies are in a relationship between themselves, their own flow states (if achieve them…which is its own discussion), but also the relationship to their group and the ‘rules’, or the lack of laws etc., around that, and how that can develop the theories around what ‘experience’ is. IL: The way I came to reflect on ‘event’ in event studies emerged initially from my interest in Plato and the platonic myth of the cave in his Republic. In that myth he tells a story of a prisoner chained in a cave, looking at the shadows cast on the cave wall they are facing and talking those shadows for something real. He then suggests the prisons is freed from those chains and discovers that the shadows are just that – cast as people process past a fire that had been behind them. The prisoner would then come to think that was the summation of reality. However, once they leave the cave and see rivers, and trees, the sun, and feel the wind on their face, and concluding that the procession was more like the shadow play than what was truly real. The event, then, are those points of disruptive phenomenological movement from one point of apprehension to another. From being chained, to the fire, to breathing in the air of the world beyond the cave. It is those evental moments of rupture where there is a re-orientation, a re-positioning of ones being-in-the-world. So, that’s how I came to understand ‘event’, not from a perspective of a ‘type’ of event, but from trying to grapple with it conceptually. That, in turn, led me to thinking more about how we can work with that sudden opening up of multiplicity and potentiality. Asking questions about how we endeavour to manage that multiplicity, to control it and shape it. If we follow that, then what an ‘event manager’ is trying to do is to bring together and construct a narrative around a set of possibilities, so that the disruption those that have elected to participate in the ‘event’ can have

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a coherence – now whether or not they actual encounter that coherence in the disruption is totally individual. What I find interesting is that those evental ruptures must, almost by definition, also be liminal – they are points of transition, of movement, of re-orientation and change. JM: The movements of those stages though has a real resonance with what you were talking about earlier, with where does one start and one end, that endless series of doors. It’s almost another critique. IL: Now my main area of interest is in protest, and events of dissent, and how that is an articulation of a group ontology. The act of protest is a form of public self-othering, one which sits in contestation with another world view. I’m really interested in trying to understand that event of dissent through that process of self-othering. Through recognising the multiplicity that sits at the core of such events. JM: So, do you then see your progression through endeavouring to understand events of dissent as liminal itself? IL: Yes. I mean, before we started recording Jonathan and I had a brief chat about our preparedness, or lack of it, for today’s discussion. And Jonathan said he had no conclusion, and I said – I never have conclusions, and while that was hyperbole it does have a sense in which it reflects what I like to do. I feel much more like an explorer in ideas, enlivened by what I encounter rather than necessarily feeling I need to explain it. JM: That’s almost as if you are happier, if we use the three stages, in staying in the liminal, dwelling in the betwixt and between, staying there and then going off in a direction that was completely unexpected. Does that resonate with what you were just saying? IL: Yes – not that I’m advocating it, it’s just that that is what I enjoy about doing the work that I do. I like trying to construct situations that stimulate conversation, interaction, so that I can encounter the complexity of the world. That’s sort of what the disrupt project was about – exploring different methodologies that eventalised the process of researching events of dissent. We were trying to provoke, trying to enliven people in a sense that…if this is happening anything is possible…if anything is possible, where and how am I going to fit with it, and then try and get an angle on where they’ve chosen to fit. JM: So, in some ways, could it be that you are trying to move people into their own versions of being between and betwixt, because by being in that less certain space it becomes possible that you can widen perspectives and change. Through disrupting people’s solidity…

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IL: It’s not a great metaphor, but it’s almost like the movement of land during an earthquake. We’re all moving around on different plateaux, not aware of the strata beneath our feet, but if the earth moves, we suddenly become aware of some of those layers that we’d taken for granted in our everyday routines. It’s only when you get these ruptures, these fractures, that you really start to see who you are, where you are, and what’s meaningful to you. EW: Jonathan – how does that fit in with your non-protest events work? Can you see those as ruptures? JM: I’m not sure I would use that word, but interesting from using events, looking back at the people I spoke to and considered in my research, around using liminoid spaces to understand themselves more, I can certainly get that sort of sense from it. I mean festival are presented as these spaces where there are no rules etc. which they’re not – but that is how many of them are sold, and what people buy into. But when you talk to people, they actually find lots of time for peace and reflection, and they were the more important bits. Especially if they went into those liminoid spaces as part their liminal experience. For example, a couple of my participants, for example, were in a liminal period between not being parents, to becoming parents. In entering a liminoid space they were able to cast aside their daily thinking and became more aware about how they were actually feeling towards things etc. etc. In terms of growing and understanding yourself, I think there was quite a lot of that. That sort of opening and awareness was quite powerful in terms of festival experience. Also, these spaces aren’t always what we hope they would be. You can feel sad and lonely as part of a hedonistic party experience. But that’s also about growing, and using these spaces and times to broadly reflect, and find time to find time for oneself. IL: Can this be tied in with memory? I’m just think, because some of the stuff I’ve heard Emma talk about seems to gel with this idea that memories cohere around points of change, points of difference…points of rupture. If we’re thinking about that, and communitas, then we could see the sharing of those points of rupture as implicated in the construction of the ontology of the groups that’s doing the sharing. Does that fit in at all? JM: That’s difficult, memory is its own thing – I’ve not done a lot of work in memory. In those liminoid spaces you do get language like – I’m going to remember this forever. IL: Isn’t it unusual to say – I remember a bit of really dull routine?

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JM: Sure, but I’m not sure I really know much about what memory is. I’ve been told about things I’ve been part of that others remember fondly and I have no first-hand memory of at all. I mean memory just opens a whole lot of doors I just don’t know anything about. For me, memory talks to a much more complicated sense of self. EW: But you may choose to choose a liminal moment to help form a memory, but that doesn’t mean you don’t remember the ordinary. It just means you are deliberately creating memories you want to share with others afterwards. It’s not that you don’t remember your daily routine – you’re just selecting memories to become shared memories. JM: That’s an interesting point. Does that mean we remember everything we do? EW: Not necessarily, but we remember a lot of it though, don’t we? I mean, I remember driving home yesterday, but I’m not going to tell you all about it. IL: Do you though? Do you actually remember the drive home, or do you remember points on the journey – and are those points, ‘evental’ moments? EW: Probably – alright, I’m convinced. What about communitas, because I’m quite interested. You’ve spoken about liminality in terms of individual, what makes important as a concept where you have gatherings. JM: That’s a really important question. IL: Though a tad random, I think it’s a bit like the idea of coalition in the policy process theory of Paul Sabatier. For Sabatier informal and formal coalitions form round possible responses to an issue. Actors will sit in diverse ontic relationship to that coalition. Those at the heart of the coalition will be strongly ontically connected to it, whilst, as you move out, those ties weaken. At the periphery actors will drift from one coalition to another. In communitas – it is those at the core that are doing the ontological generation stuff. There are a number of clear connections there with the stuff around protest that interests me. I mean you can seem something like a demonstration along a street as being the articulation, for some, of a strong ontic commitment, whilst others are there for little more than a cheap trip to London so they can catch the shops after an hour in Hyde Park. Then for those watch – some will become drawn to that coalitional core, whilst others will be peripheral, and others will just be annoyed that their day has been ‘unnecessarily’ interrupted’. JM: So, you’re thinking about the centre of the communitas as engaged in constructing the ontology, and the further out you go you

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have the person that’s connected to that group, has a relationship to that group, but doesn’t share all the facets of it. IL: Sure, and if you go further out, you’ll get to people that are drifting between groups. JM: And we move between peripheries and the centre. And there will be processes that draw people closer to the centre or push them away. IL: Sure. JM: I think the word ‘communitas’ is quite interesting because the goto position is around being together in these liminal times. But it is also important to think about it in three ways. So, spontaneous communitas – being in the moment and letting it happen. Then Turner (1974) talks about ideological communitas, which links it back to flow, because that is what is creating the memories of that group once you’re outside it. Then the normative, which is what I was talking about earlier is around the liminal time becoming a permanent state; where you create your own rules to help maintain that position. So, you can see these all, quite a lot, in events. There the spontaneous, bringing strangers together, then the sharing afterwards. IL: And then there is almost a mythos around attending festivals which creates a normative aspect of the liminoid spaces of festival. I mean it’s not that long ago when the thought of saying going to a festival is a sort of rite of passage for many young people would have sounded like an absurdity – but now, it seems quite obvious. JM: Yes, it’s about forming your own versions of thing – setting your own rules and the theoretical language around it. So, do we think about these elements, try to apply them, to try and create something ‘unique’ about our event? Something that people are drawn to. Is that possible? If so – to what extent? IL: I’m not sure we could “cause” that kind of impact, but it should be possible to offer opportunities that increase the likelihood of that happening. JM: I think I’d agree with that – it’s a sort of how much can you design/how much can you manage, kind of thing. EW: If you bring that back to liminality then is that what you’re talking about, that the opportunities are only created if you create something that is liminal? Where does liminality fit within that? IL: It’s creating those potentialities, and because that’s a multiplicity – not a thing – then, what it is, is that you’re using the liminal to create an evental …arena. That’s not just a physical space or time, it’s an emotional

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space/time as well; an affective one, imaginary in the sense Castoriadis (1997) and Lacan (1988) use that idea of the imaginary. It’s about how we construct space (time and identity) through their imaginary. JM: Yeah – interesting so its and what you perceive it to be, or how you perceive it. I mean, I see a lot of magical spaces, but they may not be magical to other people – especially at festivals. Is that what you mean? IL: …and people have magical moments at all sorts of events, not just festivals, even at business conferences. We’ve not talk about them at all have we, I mean part of that is because where we come from, in terms of our research interests, are festivals and dissent, but we’ve got to remember that the field of events is so much, much wider. JM: To think back to the question, I mean that sort of reflects back to the point I was making earlier about. Sometimes when you read about liminal and liminoid they come across as quite distinct from each other; as though there were quite a strong distinction, in some ways. To talk about liminal being based in cultures that were outside ‘western’ cultures – ones where work and play are the same thing (St. John, 2008; Turner, 1974). And liminoid spaces as ones we go to in order to remove ourselves from those things. But there is clearly a relationship between the two. I mean the time between 18 and 21 is a rite of passage around growing up etc., and in there you have times to go to those liminoid spaces which also form part of the liminal, transitional, experience. So, there is a relationship there that goes back to talking about the idea of putting on certain types of event provides opportunity for those things to happen. Making those spaces that allow people to enjoy that period of transition. IL: There are lots of overlaps with other theoretical perspectives as well. I mean coming at events this way really gels with Foucault’s (1970) and Bourdieu’s (1990) ideas of how discourse constructs the world around us. We see links between it and Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the social production of space, and Lacan’s ideas of ‘the imaginary’ (Lacan, 1988). I think we can see significant resonances with identity formation as well. I’m put in mind of Lacan’s discussion of the Mirror Stage (Lacan, 1998), we from identity through encountering one’s self as other. I mean the mirror stage is quite a primordial liminal moment. JM: I think there are some tensions between the way we approach events and behaviour change theories. Behaviour change theories and those sorts of approaches, see identity change as a sort of process whereby if you do this then this will happen. They’re sort of reductionist and positivist in quite a mechanistic, rather than organic way. It moves away from

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those approaches in social psychology that think about the individual in a more ideographic and holistic sense (Langdridge, 2007, 2008; Larkin, Eatough, & Osborn, 2011). We’re more interested in what that person is going through, and what do they understand as their own identity (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009); and not trying to apply a general model of behaviour change on them. We start with the person and look out rather than looking inward. IL: It undermines this bifurcation of subjectivity and objectivity…in that you can’t be either whilst also being both. JM: And that links back to our original discussion around whether or not liminality is or isn’t there. If we drill down deep enough, it doesn’t exist, but at the same time you can use relatively cogently, to plot and make sense of things – it’s where you position it, and your relationship to it. IL: It is itself betwixt and between. Liminality is liminal. EW: I mean it seems to fit really well with Collin’s work on interaction ritual chains. If the interaction is the disruptive moment, the liminal moment, he argues that that becomes something you want to spread, so you create a ritual chain that then affects others and affects others…as it moves outwards. So, it links in with communitas and liminality. Something happens that triggers this interactional ritual phase, as it moves out it creates a way of being; which seems to fit with the things you’ve been saying about communitas and the liminal, and all that. JM: I mean that’s really interesting just thinking about the impact we have on other people, not just around events. IL: There is just so much we could go into, it’s so rich; perhaps we should draw it to a close there.

References Ashworth, P. (2003). An approach to phenomenological psychology: The contingencies of the lifeworld. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 34(2), 145–156. Bourdieu, P. (1990). In other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology (M. Adamson, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bruner, E. M. (1986). Experience and its expressions. In V. W. Turner & E. M. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience (pp. 3–33). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

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Castoriadis, C. (1997). World in fragments: Writings on politics, society, psychoanalysis and the imagination (D. A. Curtis, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dilthey, W. (1976/2010). Selected writings (H. Rickman, Trans. and Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Originally published in 1900). Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things. London: Tavistock. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Husserl, E. (1911/1965). Phenomenology and the crisis of philosophy. Translated from German by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper & Row (Originally published in 1911). Jackson, M. (1996). Introduction: Phenomenology, radical empiricism, and anthropological critique. In M. Jackson (Ed.), Things as they are: New directions in phenomenological anthropology (pp. 1–51). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jackson, M. (2005). Existential anthropology: Events, exigencies and effects. Oxford: Berghahn. Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book I: Freud’s papers on technique (J. Forrester, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lacan, J. (1998). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XI: The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: W. W. Norton. Langdridge, D. (2007). Phenomenological psychology: Theory, research and method. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Langdridge, D. (2008). Phenomenology and critical social psychology: Directions and debates in theory and research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(3), 1126–1142. Larkin, M., Eatough, V., & Osborn, M. (2011). Interpretative phenomenological analysis and embodied, active, situated cognition. Theory and Psychology, 21(3), 318–337. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research. Los Angeles: Sage. Smith, J. A., Harre, R., & Van Langenhove, L. (1995). Ideography and the case-study. In J. A. Smith, R. Harre, & L. Van Langenhove (Eds.), Rethinking psychology (pp. 59–69). London: Sage. St. John, G. (2008). (Ed.). Victor Turner and contemporary cultural performance (pp. 1–37). New York: Bergham Books. Thomassen, B. (2009). The uses and meanings of liminality. International Political Anthropology, 2(1), 5–27. Turner, V. W. (1967). The forests of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. London: Cornell University Press.

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Turner, V. W. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure (1st ed.). Ithaca, USA: Cornell University Press. Turner, V. W. (1974). Liminal to liminoid in play, flow and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92. Turner, V. W. (1986). Dewey, dilthey, and drama: An essay in anthropology of experience. In V. W Turner & E. M. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience (pp. 33–450). Chicago: University of Illinois Press. van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1952). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwells.

CHAPTER 3

Liminality, Subjectivity, and Aesthetics in Event Management Studies Peter Vlachos

Introduction The discipline of events management has been likened as an ‘art and science’ (Goldblatt, 1990). Whilst this observation may be directed at any number of occupations, from medical doctors to footballers, it holds a particular resonance to the domain of events management. Event management incorporates elements of control and creativity. Yet events management textbooks in higher education, as this chapter will later show, pay only a limited attention to the creative (and subjective) side of events management. Whilst some events may be genuinely liminal, in the sense of van Gennep (2013) and Turner (1977), others can be more liminoid (Turner, 1974). Aesthetic design is a central component of liminal and liminoid events. However, as the chapter argues, a relatively small amount of attention is paid to the actual design ‘threshold’ experience in the teaching of events management at the higher education level.

P. Vlachos (B) University of Greenwich, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_3

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The purpose of this chapter is to define and apply the liminality concept to events management theory, education, and vocational practice. Particular attention will be paid to the design component of events as liminal and liminoid experiences and to the function of the event manager in their execution. The chapter proceeds as follows: Firstly, the chapter briefly identifies and explains the concepts of liminal, liminoid, and communitas. Secondly, the chapter applies these concepts to the field of events management. Thirdly, the role of the events manager is deconstructed through the analytic prism of the liminal and liminoid concepts. Fourthly, an analysis is made of pedagogic materials in relation to these concepts. Finally, the implications are discussed for events management practice, events management teaching and learning, and events management theory. Suggestions for future research are proposed. The chapter concludes with a call for a widening of events ‘management’ higher education teaching, learning, and research to reappropriate and to incorporate more of the liminal, aesthetic, and design components.

The Liminality Concept The origins of the liminality concept have been already addressed in detail in the introductory chapter to this volume. In this section, a brief overview of the basic theory of the liminality concept is presented. The following section then expands the concept more deeply in its application to live events and their management. The roots of the liminality concept in the wider social sciences can be traced to the structural anthropology writings of van Gennep (2013). Building on van Gennep’s theories, Victor Turner’s (1974) research focused on the social phenomena of rites and rituals. The concept of the ‘liminal’ (Latin: limens, threshold) refers to a fluid, ambiguous condition where normal social status and identity are suspended. It is a condition that echoes elements of temporary ecstasy, of being outside one’s usual self. Rites are socially established ceremonial acts that mark life transitions, typically of a religious nature (Turner, 1967). Rituals are sequences of human activity that incorporate set movements, gestures, words, and objects that are performed in a particular place and in a fixed temporal order (Bell, 1992). The concept of liminality according to Turner (1974)

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can be presented as three phases that together comprise a social rite, typically a rite of passage to a new life-stage or social identity. The three phases are • the pre-liminal state • the liminal (fluid) phase • the post-liminal re-aggregation These three phases of the liminal phenomenon are evident in social rituals related to life-stage transition, for example the transition from childhood to adulthood, marriage rituals and similar life-changing social event. The three-phase liminality model is particularly useful in deconstructing and analysing social rituals. For example, Johnson (2011) applies the notion of liminality to university initiation rites commonly known as ‘hazing’. Such rites follow the three-phase structure: the separation phase with its associated pre-initiation anxiety; the transitory liminal phase; and, the concluding incorporation phase where the initiate is reintegrated (ibid.). In the unfolding of these liminal phenomena, the individual undergoes a change in their social status and personal core identity. Members of the social group are expected thereafter to treat the initiate according to their new status and identity. The community as a whole thus also changes in its composition. For example, an individual’s transition to adulthood alters the balance of children and adults in that society; a marriage alters the availability of potential mates and adds to the number of households in the community. In other words, these liminal transitions not only carry symbolic importance but also economic implications. Turner acknowledged in his later writings (Turner, 1974) that modern society differs from the more traditional, pre-industrial, and agrarian, that formed the backdrop to the development of his liminal concept. Modern society, he argues, is less bound by the social obligations that previously made participation in rites and rituals socially compulsory both for the initiate and the observer/witnesses. However, the rise of industrial society, coupled with increased individual freedom and expanding commerce, has resulted in a growth of what Turner (1974) labels ‘liminoid’ (liminal-like) phenomena. Such phenomena carry some of the attributes of liminality, such as ‘threshold’, ambiguity, and elements of spatial and temporal displacement from the normal. On the other hand, however, participation in

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liminoid activities tends to be voluntary and the results are not necessarily deeply transformational to the individual or society. Thus, Turner had already set some of the crucial conceptual groundwork for the understanding and explaining the rise of the ‘experience economy’ a quarter century before Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) exposition and popularisation of the concept. It is not surprising, therefore, that Turner’s theory of rites, rituals, liminality, and phases has captured the interest of events management theorists (St. John, 2008). The next section unpacks the liminality concept as applied to the planned live events field in greater detail.

The Liminality Concept Applied to Events All rituals can be considered as events, but not all events are, or necessarily contain, rituals. An ‘event’ in the specialist sense of the events management discipline can be defined as a planned gathering of a group of people for a specified time period at a particular location (place) for a specifically defined purpose. This definition can be abbreviated as the four Ps of event management: People, Place, Period (time) and Purpose. This core definition of ‘event’ can refer to regular events such as a weekly class or a monthly gathering of a book club. The term ‘event management’ however, both in academic and industrial usage, has tended to refer primarily to less frequent, irregular, or unusual events. The difference between ‘event’ and ‘special event’ is a relative one in terms typically related to periodic frequency and scale and scope of the audience. Liminal intensity is more difficult to create and measure, which may explain in part why academic textbooks and programmes tend to underplay the topics of design and aesthetics. It is more straightforward to teach about health and safety risk assessments thanto design and determine liminal thresholds. Events are symbolic consumption goods (Cody & Lawlor, 2011; Holt, 1995; Thorstein, 1899) fuelling the post-industrial ‘experience economy’. But how closely does the liminality concept fit the wide range of event typologies? Liminality can apply to a wide variety of events, though not necessarily in the same way. Some type of events may retain liminality at their core (such as personal events: weddings and religiously linked ceremonies). Cultural events, given their often religious and spiritual origins also can retain a high degree of symbolism and hence liminal underpinning. Sporting events have liminal aspects in that the outcome creates new

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status (winners and losers) and the rules of the game include behaviours and rites on the part of both the players and the spectators (Rowe, 2008). It is more difficult, however, to discern liminality in other types of events. Business events such as trade fairs and industry exhibitions are a blend of professional gathering and market. Festivalisation may be in evidence, suggesting a liminoid event experience. Trade exhibitions such as the World Travel Market (WTM) held annual at the ExCeL exhibition centre in London increasingly feature entertainment and performances, including interactive activities for attendees. Elements of the three phases of liminal experience are in evidence: the pre-liminal information search and booking, the threshold of arrival, the experience of the event, and the transition to ‘seasoned’ attendee. For some first-time attendees, attending a professional conference or exhibition may be a marker of their attainment of professional status. Similarly, a student’s first attendance at a university lecture signals their entry into a new social status. However, these liminoid examples do not carry the symbolic weight and depth of unified ritual that more liminal events contain. The educational experience over a three-year period, in the attainment of an undergraduate degree has elements of ritual, threshold, and transformation, but without the intensity of a tight spatially and temporally defined rite. The university graduation ceremony, on the other hand, contains the full rituals and ceremony attendant to a properly liminal rite of passage. Fan club events such as Comic Con on the other hand are rather different from more typical business events. Here, as with other cultural events, there is high symbolic content and participant interaction (Jenkins, 2012) within the spatial and temporal liminal sphere. Other hobbying conventions and consumer exhibitions may involve similar personal attachments. Yet ultimately participation is voluntary not obligatory. Thus, these types of events generally fall into the category of liminoid rather than liminal. On the surface, attendance at any event could be treated as a liminal phenomenon. At all three phases (pre-, during, -post) there are well established associated behaviours and rituals. The pre-event phase includes the information search, registration, or ticket purchase. These days the pre-phase may also include digital personal preparatory rituals such as the updating of personal or professional profiles on one’s social media pages. The liminal threshold is reached with the physical arrival at the event. During the event there is experience of the event itself which consists of an out of the ordinary experience at a designated location and time.

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The period at the event, any event, whether cultural or business or personal, is a period of freedom from normal daily routine to enjoy a concert, learn about developments in one’s industry or engage in some creative activity/thinking. The post-event denouement brings the participant back to the normal state, albeit transformed in some way. A truly liminal event is intended to ‘create a sense of vulnerability and a consequent dependence upon the larger group for support after the trauma of the event’ (Johnson, 2011, p. 207). In some liminal events, such as life-stage ceremonies, the participants may indeed emerge with a new identity such as husband or wife, or as university graduate. However, modern, industrial and post-industrial, secular, societies are more individuated than previous more traditional societies. Hence, we see the rise of events are liminal-like rather than liminal in the deeper sense. These ‘liminoid’ events have elements of ritual behaviours but without comprising a religious (or similar) rite of passage and subsequent transformation. Moreover, the diversity in modern societies means that some events may have a liminal effect on one or some individuals (see examples earlier) but not for others or for the social group as a whole. Liminal rites that are religious or spiritual in one sense, such as wedding ritual ceremonies, are typically followed by a separate though connected liminoid social celebratory gathering (Teodorescu & Calin, 2015). The social liminoid event may re-emphasise the recent rite of passage, for example the clinking of glasses calling for the new married couple to kiss in full view of public, thereby reaffirming in themselves, and the social group gathered, their transformation in social status. Whilst all events, liminal or liminoid, may contain ritualistic behaviours and social expectation to conform to those behaviours, it is not the case that all events constitute a rite of passage that leads to ‘rebirth’, i.e. transformation of core identity. The liminal status of the event experience may be highly subjective. What may be a liminal event experience for one person or social group may be liminoid for others, or indeed the event may even be treated as instrumental activity (e.g. as a sales promotion event). Liminality has both spatial and temporal dimensions. This dual aspect of liminality does translate smoothly to events generally given that the four P’s definition of events presented earlier occurs at a particular place and at a specific time. From this perspective, all events share a basic degree of liminality in that they all feature ingress and egress, that is to say, an entry and later exit from the physical and temporal space of the event. Consequently, all rites of passage may be classified as events,

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but not all events are rites of passage. Furthermore, both liminal and liminoid events comprise recognised established and expected patterns of behaviour. However, liminal rites are socially determined, imposed, and regulated, whereas liminoid events are ones into which participants voluntarily enter. Modern capitalist, democratic, and secular societies have continually expanded the realms of individual freedom. Rites of passage can be enacted by legal and administrative processes (i.e. contracts) rather than social rites and rituals. This modernist expansion of freedom from past socially determined practices has at least two implications. One is that events are increasingly more liminoid rather than liminal. The more modern type of liminality is separated and distanced from natural life processes. Liminal life experiences trace a trajectory, at least for the individual. They can be likened to modern Special Events that happen rarely, in the case of the individual’s own life-transition luminal experiences perhaps only once per lifetime. By contrast, liminoid events can include casual entertainment experiences or cyclical e.g. annual festivals. Moreover, given than liminoid events are voluntarily entered into, they can by the same logic be abandoned at will. Liminoid event experiences are commercialised, more casual transactions in which the individual has a greater degree of choice although the choice is as consumer rather than social citizen. Secondly, in modern events, the temporal and spatial dimensions of liminality are further challenged and complicated by the rise of ‘virtual events’ such as digital live streaming of arts performances (Mueser & Vlachos, 2018). The commonly understood notion of ‘attending’ an event becomes strained in the age of ubiquitous, near real-time digital and audio transmission. These days one may ‘participate’ virtually in an event: watch remotely, interact electronically, via synchronous communication exchanges on online social media platforms. The new technology raises a parallel question; can liminality be achieved virtually? For example, is a wedding ceremony valid where the partners are not present in the same location? In the technologically evolving world of live events, it appears that spatiality is more negotiable than temporality. Yet virtual events cannot involve the sort of total body experience that actual presence does. Virtual ‘attendance’ may involve, via mediated technological channels, the eyes and ears, but not the senses of smell or touch or taste. Without the involvement of all five senses, there is an inevitable weakening of attention, focus, time alignment, spatial continuity, and social interaction.

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In other words, virtual events will struggle to achieve the degree of liminality that live attendance can create. Despite their increasingly consumerisation, the freedom that liminal spaces and events can provide the freedom to experience the unintended or the unexpected (Thomassen, 2012). A modern outdoor music festival for example will have a variety of stages with different musical styles, ancillary activities, and so on. Some critical observers (Bryman, 1999) maintain that this alleged freedom can be tightly controlled and planned, in effect only an illusion of freedom. Even this kind of liminoid experience however contains greater freedom than the more tightly defined liminal sacred space which focuses one’s attention on a more predictably established frame in which social catharsis rather than merely individual consumption occurs. Even contemporary liminoid events continue to retain liminal qualities. Since ancient times, sports events have involved competitors entering the match as athletes and leaving as victors or losers (Christesen & Kyle, 2014). Championship, end of season, sporting events carry even higher stakes, complete with the associated rituals, ceremonies, and threshold activities, that include entrance into the arena and the playing field being treated by fans, players, master of ceremonies (i.e. referees), and acolytes (e.g. security staff) like sacred space. A similarly liminal, competitive aura nowadays also permeates entertainment events such as the X Factor (field research, December 2017). Audiences attend live performances or watch televised broadcasts in order to follow the initiates’ journey. The final crowning ceremony, of the winning singer or band, marks their transition from amateur performer to professional pop star. The live event (ethnographic field research, December 2017) and change of status on the evening is marked by a short (approximately one hour) hiding of the winners, which take place at the conclusion of the competition; after which they emerge at the celebratory post-event party, now accompanied by security guards, media cameras, and accolades. Liminal rites of passage are temporarily subversive (Turner, 1969, pp. 166–168). Hierarchies are temporarily suspended. Nietzsche (1967) wrote of the Dionysian and Apollonian tendencies in the human spirit. The suspension of normal and established modalities during the liminal phase can be described as Dionysian: a sense of ecstasy, exuberance, freedom, and creativity (Euripides, 1960). The discipline of events management, on the other hand, aims to impose an Apollonian rational efficiency

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to these liminal and liminoid occurrences and experiences. From a materialist perspective, liminoid events generate economic value whereas liminal events use up economic value (Table 3.1). The differences between liminoid and liminal events can now be summarised as follows. Liminoid events are objectively managed in an Apollonian fashion by an event manager with the aim of controlling the experience and outcome using techniques of planning. Liminoid events are in the risk-averse realm of entertainment rather than cathartic ritual. Liminoid events create economic value; we see their outputs featured in economic impact reports and government documents relating to the creative industries, tourism, and urban regeneration, for example. The liminoid academic training of future event managers is in schools and faculties of business. Engagement in liminoid events is voluntary and often commercial in nature. Liminal events, on the other hand, are intensely personal and subjective experiences. Though driven by established rites and traditions, there are elements of spontaneity, and temporary disorder. Reaching and passing the threshold of risk into a new way of being is at the centre of the liminal experience. Liminal events are more likely to use up surplus economic production, as rituals such as potlatch, and gifting and food at weddings demonstrate. In short, liminal events serve more of a social function than an economic function. Participation in expected rather than voluntary. Table 3.1 Liminal and liminoid construction of events

Perspective Control Risk Materiality

Function Academic location Volition Ethos

Liminoid events

Liminal events

Objective (event manager) Planned/Ordered/Managed Reassuring Production (generating economic value—e.g. culture led urban revitalisation) Economic function Faculty of Business

Subjective (attendee/participant) Spontaneous/Disordered/Chaotic Threshold Consumption (consumes economic value—e.g. potlatch)

Voluntary Apollonian

Obligatory Dionysian

Social function Faculty of Art

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Subjectivity and the Event Experience Events are subjective experiences in a number of ways. Firstly, they are intricately linked to a person’s experience of a particular place (Lefebvre, 2004; Tuan, 1977). Secondly, events contain elements of sensory spectacle (Debord, 1994) making them unusual, notable, and thereby potentially liminal or liminoid. Thirdly, live events provide the opportunity for individual participants to demonstrate subjectively their social distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). The construction of the live event is a product of the event’s design. Aristotle’s (2003) deconstruction of the dramatic form in his ‘Poetics’ captures the flow of the dramatic experience and can be applied to the construction of liminality in the event experience. Liminal events will have a mythos, that is, an arrangement of pre-selected incidents chosen by the event designer to encourage a particular understanding and experience of the event. The characters of the event i.e. the audiences, the staff, and the speakers, are identified, oftentimes by uniform, positioning, or other forms of distinction. Words (diction) in an event may play a lesser role than in traditional text-based theatre, and the thoughts of the various event players may be less exposed than in theatre. However, the liminality of events is certainly influenced by Aristotle’s final two components of the dramatic from: spectacle and melody. The lights, colour, and sounds of an event help to create the spectacle, and a temporally well-designed event will reflect a balance of harmony and variety in the event’s flow. An event can be designed in the technical sense; however, the experience of these components is still subject to the individuality of the audience members.

Deconstructing the Role and Function of the Event Manager in Relation to the Liminal Concept It has been argued in the previous sections that event management, as a function, straddles, and incorporates both Dionysian and Apollonian tendencies. If indeed this is the case, a new question arises: what role does the ‘event manager’ fulfil? Is the event manager a designer of rituals? Can they be likened to a priest or shaman (Turner, 1974, p. 64) or even a ‘trickster’ (Turner, 1974, p. 71)? From the resource perspective, the event manager can be likened to the χoρηγo´ ς (choregos) in ancient Greek drama festivals, the person who

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coordinated the resources and programming of the festival (Osborne, 2004; Wilson, 2003). Although not necessarily as rich as were the ancient Athenian χoρηγo´ι (choregoi), the event manager, like them, performs a public function of amassing and coordinating the resources required for the production. As a vocation, events management comprises multiple facets, similar to the role of theatrical stage manager (pre-production manager and delivery manager). For liminal events, event managers are not like priests or shamans. In a religious rite a priest or similar person acts as a spiritual intermediary figure. In liminoid events, other actors assume the priest-like role: at a business event, such as a conference, it is the keynote speaker; at a classical music concert it is the conductor, at a sports event the referee, controls and coordinates the off-pitch activities. Meanwhile, off-pitch, the stewards oversee crowd behaviours and control crowd flows, whilst the attendees themselves follow the internalised, expected, ritualistic norms, and modes of behaviour. The ‘art versus science’ dual, and possibly conflicting, aspects of the event management function analogy are apt here. The job of the event manager can be said to incorporate in fact three components: art, science, and craft. The Greek word τ šχ νη (techne) refers to the fusion of aesthetics and utility (Benjamin, 2008). The event manager is a craftsperson in that they bring together the various components of the event ritual though not necessarily designing the core rites themselves. Another, alternative term that captures the liminal and liminoid work of the event manager is the French term ‘mis en scéne’. On both performance stage and cinematic screen, ‘miseur en scéne’ refers to the person who oversees and directs placement and movement of performers and objects (props, scenery, etc.) within the spatial and temporal parameters of the event, in the aim of translating the ideas of the ‘auteur’ into concrete human sensory experience. The term relates, literally, to the ‘setting of the stage’, thereby putting into motion the conditions in which the performers and audience are able to engage in the liminal or liminoid experience. Consequently, the role of the event manager across the liminal and liminoid continuum is inherently post-structuralist. In putting together and executing the event, the event manager must stand back from the liminal (ecstatic) aspects in order to ensure that the event goes to plan, safety is adhered to, and so on.

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In ethnographic research, ‘emic’ observations are those made from within the social grouping being observed. Conversely, ‘etic’ observations are made from an outside perspective (Morris, Leung, Ames, & Lickel, 1999; Pike, 1967). The event manager must be able to imagine the emic perspective from within the audience’s point of view of the event experience, as well as manage the event from an etic viewpoint as an outsider.

The Liminality Concept in Events Management Higher Education Foucault (2002) identified the manners by which knowledge is constructed and arranged in order to serve particular interests. More specifically, the categories within which knowledge is framed are a reflection of power. These bureaucratic categories of knowledge are not simply arrangements of administrative convenience, but rather indicators of actual or intended political aims. Foucault’s notion of the ‘archaeology of knowledge’ is an apt theoretical microscope with which to analyse the locations and categories of event management teaching and learning in higher education institutions. The positioning of events management as an academic discipline, and of the design topic itself in teaching materials, illustrate and providing indications of how liminality is constructed and arranged within the events management discipline. The Location of Events Studies in the Higher Education Context A variety of cases could be made for locating the events of academic discipline in any number of faulty categories. Events Management is a multidisciplinary phenomenon/discipline in its origins as an academic field of study and research. Arguments of favour of locating in business faculties include their project management aspect and the instrumental justifications for events as experiential marketing tools. Arguments in favour of locating events studies in arts or humanities faculties include the perspective that events are a variation of theatre or wider cultural production and consumption, the aesthetic and sensory aspects of event experiences, and the sociological and anthropological dimensions of events as social natural phenomena (Turner, 1982). Arguments could even be made in favour of politics faculty due to the position of events as a variation on leisure and recreation public policy, tourism policy or urban development public policy. Finally,

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arguments could be made that events management should remain primarily a vocational subject, as is mainly the case in north American academia, as a form of hospitality, events management as self-employed business, or event planning as hobby. Consequently, the position of liminality in the teaching of events management will reflect the perspective and prior experience both of the institution and of the student. Yet the teaching of events management in the English-speaking academic world tends to be concentrated on the form rather than the content of events. This is a significant observation because, at present, academic higher education institutions in the United Kingdom and Australia in particular dominate the discipline. There are relatively few events management university degree programmes elsewhere in the world. Where there are (e.g. south-east Asia) they are typically franchised programmes from the aforementioned dominant English-speaking countries. University degree programmes in events management have tended to be located in business faculties rather than arts or humanities faculties. In other words, the emphasis has tended to favour applied ‘management’ rather than the ‘events’ themselves. Events management degrees are similar to music management degrees in that both are concerned with the business and operational elements of the discipline, not with music theory, composition, or performance per se. My argument here is that from the perspective of the liminality concept, the collective (though not necessarily coordinated) decision to position events management within business faculties has had pedagogical repercussions. Other modern fields of study have developed in a more inter-disciplinary fashion, for example ‘creative industries’ and ‘urban studies’. The events management discipline could have developed in a broader ‘event studies’ manner, for example, to incorporate more of the sociological and design aspects that support liminality. Alternatively, the events discipline could have been developed from leisure studies (as a branch of public policy), urban studies, or perhaps theatrical stage management. Any of these latter options would have increased the scope for incorporating a greater emphasis on the liminal component of events. As it has turned out, however, events management has followed the path of tourism management in its focus on the managerial aspects rather than the content itself. By contrast, the emergent discipline of arts management (later creative industries) has tended to remain in the humanities field rather than transferred to business faculties.

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The Location of ‘Design’ in Higher Education Events Management Textbooks In order to test the above hypothesis, a content analysis was conducted of n = 34 university level events management textbooks in the English language. These were obtained from a university library collection at an institution that has an established undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in events management. The sample of texts included titles that covered a comprehensive range of topics. The objective of this exercise was the extent to which liminality is covered in these comprehensive volumes, several of which are targeted as core undergraduate texts. Books that were expressly focused on sub-themes (e.g. event marketing and event human resource management) were excluded on the basis that it would not be expected for such more specialised texts to contain an extended discussion of liminality. An exception was made for textbooks that focused on event design as this sub-theme is clearly connected to the liminality theme. The texts were surveyed to ascertain (a) if and where the concepts of liminality, ritual and communitas were covered, and (b) to what extent and in what manner event design (as a proxy for the liminality concept) was addressed. The results found that liminality was only given limited attention in the majority of the 34 textbooks. The range of books themselves can be categorised into three types of approaches. One group of texts often written relatively early in the event discipline’s emergence, mainly emanated from the USA. These texts were mainly hospitality and etiquette oriented. Although those early, vocationally oriented texts are less ‘academic’, that is to say, less analytic or critical in style, they do typically identify and focus on factors that affect liminal and liminoid experience. Such texts show attention to the arrival of guests (i.e. threshold) and the rituals and aesthetics of events (e.g. Silvers, 2003). The target audience for this material appears to be students in Further Education (i.e. polytechnics or community colleges) rather than Higher Education (universities). As events management courses evolved into stand-alone academic degree programmes, more comprehensive texts followed. These texts usually contain a series of chapters on topics like finance, project management, service operations, etc. as applied to live events. Such texts often include an introductory chapter on the history and nature of the events industry and discipline. The ‘Events Management Body of Knowledge’

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framework supported and reinforced the positioning of the ‘events management’ discipline within the broader fields of business management and more specifically as project management. In the EMBOK model (EMBOK, 2005) ‘design’ and ‘creativity’ are minor components in what is overwhelmingly an Apollonian approach to the field. In a few cases, elements of liminality are addressed in a chapter on ‘event design’ (Yeoman, Robertson, Ali-Knight, Drummond, & McMahon-Beattie, 2004; Ferdinand & Kitchin, 2012). Yet these chapters, too, lean-to an operational approach such as ‘service blueprinting’ (Bladen, Kennell, Abson, & Wilde, 2012). Whilst such approaches may acknowledge an element of the ‘threshold’ aspect, they do not really address the sensory design of the actual ritual components of the event experience, such as movement or visual, sound and tactile sensations. An exception is Halsey’s (2012) book on corporate event design, one of the few texts found that carries a sustained and in-depth treatment of the event design topic. A third more recent wave of event management textbooks relate to specific topics of applied business management such as human resources (Van der Wagen, 2011) or sustainability (Jones, 2017). By comparison, theatrical stage management, and stage design texts (e.g. Pavis, 2013) engage more closely and thoroughly with the techniques of scenography and their intended impacts of the liminal or liminoid experience. These theatrical stage management texts are presented as technical tomes within the wider artist (literary) field of theatre. Yet compared with their event management counterparts they contain more liminal-oriented content. Stage ‘management’ does not appear to have traversed into the realm of business management in the manner that events ‘management’ has done. In addition, theatrical acting texts teach performers how to create liminoid experiences for audiences in traditional theatre (Bell, 2008; Grotowski, 2012), theatre of the oppressed (Boal, 2000) and more recently in the growing field of immersive theatre (Machon, 2013; White, 2012).

Summary and Implications The secularisation of society has de-ritualised modern life to such an extent that these days some events may still be liminal for some individuals whereas for the same event may be liminoid for others. Or alternatively an event may be liminal for a particular individual but liminoid for some

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or all the other members in that society. Meanwhile, event management students are increasingly being taught to design and deliver ‘experiences’ rather than simply ‘events. ‘Experiential’ marketing has further diluted the liminality of events by emphasising even more the liminoid over the liminal. Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) prediction of a transition from the ‘experience economy’ to a more ‘transformational economy’ remains to be seen. If anything, we see a fixation on fleeting experiences rather than life-changing transformations. In terms of transformational impact, the instrumental use of events, for example as a tool of urban revitalisation initiatives (Richards, 2017; Viehoff & Poynter, 2016) suggests that the liminal concept may even be extendable to the idea that societies (geographic districts) can be transformed even though individuals within the society may not personally experience transformation or indeed may suffer negative effects. The transition from liminal to liminoid events is representative of the increasing commodification of the lifeworld through instrumental reason (Habermas, 1987). With the increasing use of events for instrumental purposes such as experiential marketing, the function of ‘event management’ is morphing into ‘experience making’ (Morgan, 2018) which signals a movement towards re-incorporating the liminal and design aspects as central features of the live event. The current situation in academia locates events management, within higher education, in the sphere of liminoid rather than liminal experience. The situation reflects, in western contexts at least, the post-modern, individualised, and commercialised nature of the experience economy. By extension, ‘events management’ reflects liminoid, etic, objective Apollonian tendencies rather than liminal, emic, subjective, transgressive, and Dionysian ones. A feature of modernity, especially in urban centres, is a constant environment of stimuli and novelty. In a way, people in modernity are at the threshold of new experiences on a nearly daily basis. This means increased audience expectations in seeking liminoid experiences. ‘Special ’ events have become ubiquitous, thereby increasing the demand on event managers to create memorable, moving experiences. Instead, there is a tendency to outsourcing the liminal components and a general instrumentalisation of events. The review of textbooks revealed an abandonment of the liminal and design aspects of events. Research focus has followed suit, as have the career paths of graduates. The debates outlined in this chapter bring forth the question as whether a rethink is required regarding the long-term positioning of

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‘events management’ as compared to the broader ‘event studies’. A more cross-disciplinary approach would necessitate breaking down current faculty and research divisions. Whilst these academic and industrial silos remain, the crucial role of liminality in the production and experience of events will continue to be overlooked. The current location of events management higher education in, primarily, faculties, and schools of business has resulted in an abandonment of its liminal and creative aspects. The void in event design studies is not currently being filled by design teaching faculties or programmes. Until events studies higher education teaching and research reappropriate the subjective, aesthetic, and liminal aspects of live events, the discipline will be destined to continue to be stuck between aesthetic ‘art’ and management ‘science’.

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Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1998). Welcome to the experience economy. Harvard Business Review, 76, 97–105. Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy: Work is theatre & every business a stage. Boston: Harvard Business Press. Richards, G. (2017). From place branding to placemaking: The role of events. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 8(1), 8–23. Rowe, S. (2008). Modern sports: Liminal ritual or liminoid leisure. In G. St. John (Ed.), Victor Turner and contemporary cultural performance (pp. 127–148). New York: Berghahn Books. Silvers, J. R. (2003). Professional event coordination. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. St. John, G. (2008). Victor Turner and contemporary cultural performance: An introduction. In G. St. John (Ed.), Victor Turner and contemporary cultural performance (pp. 1–37). New York: Berghahn Books. Teodorescu, B., & Calin, R. A. (2015). The base articulations of the liminality concept. Review of European Studies, 7 (12), 97. Thomassen, B. (2012). Revisiting liminality: The danger of empty spaces. In H. Andrews & L. Roberts (Eds.), Liminal landscapes: Travel, experience and spaces in-between (pp. 37–51). Abingdon: Routledge. Thorstein, V. (1899). The theory of the leisure class: An economic study of institutions. New York: Macmillan. Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Turner, V. (1967). The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. New York: Cornell University Press. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Abingdon: Routledge. Turner, V. (1974). Liminal to liminoid, in play, flow, and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. Rice Institute Pamphlet-Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92. Turner, V. (1977). Variations on a theme of liminality. In S. F. Moore & B. G. Myerhoff (Eds.), Secular ritual (pp. 36–52). Van Gorcum: Assen. Turner, V. W. (1982). From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play. New York: PAJ Publications. Van der Wagen, L. (2011). Event management: For tourism, cultural business & sporting events (4th ed.). Pearson Higher Education Australia. Van Gennep, A. (2013). The rites of passage (M. B. Vizedom & G. L. Caffee, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Viehoff, V., & Poynter, G. (2016). Mega-event cities: Urban legacies of global sports events. Abingdon: Routledge. White, G. (2012). On immersive theatre. Theatre Research International, 37 (3), 221–235.

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Wilson, P. (2003). The Athenian institution of the Khoregia: The chorus, the city and the stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yeoman, I., Robertson, M., Ali-Knight, J., Drummond, S., & McMahon-Beattie, U. (2004). Festival and events management. Routledge.

PART II

Oratorios

The Liminal and Liminoid in culture and cultural and sport events. To say the least, cultural and sports events are complex. To say (marginally) more: Events are moments; they are time-bound and are overtly and tacitly linked to a space, and the place in which they occur. They transgress, express, include, and exclude. They draw together those who don’t know each other, and they can alter the relationships of those who do. They can separate, they can unite. They can generate progression; they can protest regression; they can initiate transgression. They can celebrate the future and they can commemorate the past. They can ignite debate, provide insight, be a cauldron of rebellion, or a call to arms. They call to provide sanctuary and solidarity. They can be isolating, lonely, and scary. They can be silent, they can be boisterous, uplifting, and heartwarming. They can be any size, from the one to the myriad and for the one to myriad; they can be impromptu or planned, inside or out…and very often, arguably, all at the same time. Liminality as conceptualised and detailed by the authors of the following chapters is a theory which enables us to investigate the process of transition and its affect upon the individual, culture, society, country and potentially, globally (Thomassen, 2009). By analysing events within these categories than, it becomes possible to develop insight, consideration, and conceptualisations which in turn drives thought, challenges assumptions and power which ultimately has the potential to affect change. Therefore, through the analysis of events using this perspective it becomes possible

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to critically assess elements of structure and understand the role of antistructure and the changes this may synthesise. By looking at liminality across event type and from a micro to macro level (Turner, 1974) we develop insights into hegemonic, heterogeneous, and homogenous relationships. Furthermore, the stratification of liminality and its fluid and oscillating nature become all the clearer. By removing the positivistic and economic shackles, we change the meaning of ‘value’ and ‘worth’ as new epistemologies and research methods yield different narratives, reveal new voices. Historically, until recent publications (Jaimangal-Jones, Pritchard & Morgan, 2007; Ritches, Lashua & Spracklenet, 2014; Ziakas & Boukas, 2013, 2014), events had been under the lens of these economic and positivistic gaze, which in turn governed the outputs and the insights created. More contemporary researchers (Rojek, 2013; Spracklen & Lamond, 2016) have begun to question this dominant approach and have sort to develop a critical approach to events. In doing so, it has been argued that it is this critical approach which is vital to the progression of events management and event studies research and teaching and therefore (Wilks, 2011; Getz, 2012; Andrews & Leopold, 2013; Lamond & Platt, 2016), to the understanding of events’ contribution to and contextualisation in, the society within which it occurs. With this aim and perspective in mind, this section of the book adds to this process and progression of these debates. The chapters within this section of the book draw on a wide range of subjects and do so by applying many contrasting yet overlapping elements of liminal time and liminoid space. They consider the multidimensional and stratified nature of the phenomenon. Whilst each chapter is contained within its own context and event, it implies a responsibility of the reader to make connections and contrasts across them. Each chapter draws on a multidisciplinary approach drawing on research and writing from a broad range of subjects: anthropology, sociology, tourism, leisure, and media studies. In addition, some of the chapters critically analyse their conceptualisations against the earlier writers in events research. Through this section of the book the chapters range from ongoing or established research to conceptual papers asking questions for future research, but all cohere in the pursuit of developing Critical Events Studies as it aims to, ‘radically challenge[s] all preceding formulations of events studies and event management by accepting that there is a central contestation at the heart of events. A construal of events as part of an “event industry” [as]

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understood to be symptomatic of the colonisation by a dominant cultural political economic hegemony’ (Lamond and Platt, 2016, pp. 3–4).

References Andrews, H., & Leopold, T. (2013). Events and the social sciences. London, UK: Taylor & Francis. Getz, D. (2012). Event studies: Theory, research and policy for planned events (2nd ed.). Abingdon, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann. Jaimangal-Jones, D., Pritchard, A., & Morgan, N. (2007). Going the distance: Locating journey, liminality and rites of passage in dance music experiences. Leisure Studies, 29(3), 253–268. Lamond, I. R., & Platt, L. (Eds.). (2016). Critical event studies: Approaches to research. London: Palgrave. Pritchard, A., & Morgan, N. (2007). De-centring tourisms intellectual universe or transversing the dialogue between change and tradition. In I. Ateljevic, A. Pritcard, & N. Morgan (Eds.), The critical turn in tourism studies: Innovative research methodologies (pp. 11–28). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. Riches, G., Lashua, B., & Spracklen, K. (2014). Female, mosher, transgressor: A “moshography” of transgressive practices within the Leeds extreme metal scene. IASPM@Journal, 4, 87–100. Rojek, C. (2013). Event power: How can global events manage and manipulate? London: Sage. Spracklen, K., & Lamond, I. R. (2016). Critical event studies. Abingdon: Routledge. Thomassen, B. (2009). The uses and meanings of liminality. International Political Anthropology, 2(1), 5–27. Turner, V. W. (1974). Liminal to liminoid in play, flow and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92. Wilks, L. (2011). Bridging and bonding: Social capital at music festivals. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 3(3), 281–297. Ziakas, V., & Boukas, N. (2013). Extracting meanings of event tourist experiences: A phenomenological exploration of Limassol carnival. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 2(2), 94–107. Ziakas, V., & Boukas, N. (2014). Contextualizing phenomenology in event management research. International Journal of Event and Festival Management , 5(1), 56–73.

CHAPTER 4

Liminality and Event Design: Liminal Space Design for Sport Events Ashley Garlick and Nazia (Naz) Ali

Introduction Rituals are inherent across a range of event types and can be found in different contexts such as cultural, legal, political, religious, and social domains. This counterbalances Brown and James’ (2004) point that ritual has been sacrificed to make way for modern event management techniques that prioritise economic viability and stakeholder satisfaction over the ritual purpose of the event. In this chapter, we reject this argument, and instead propose that ritual is undergoing a new resurgence in terms of its importance to event design beyond the commercial significance. Finkel (2010) also supports the view that commercialisation has become the dominant, most important facet to event organisers. Moreover, throughout history, sport events appear to have a tradition of ritualism with theological underpinnings of spiritual and religious value. The Olympic Games

A. Garlick (B) University of West London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] N. (Naz) Ali University of East London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_4

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as a Panhellenic sport event in Ancient Greece is an example of a sacred event infused with celebration, ritual, and culture (Maussier, 2017). In the world today, the Olympic Games continue to stage the mediation of liminal ritualistic performances. For instance, Lawson’s (2011) work on the Opening Ceremony suggests a dialectical negation of pre-modern religious values with modern secular performances. We further argue that liminality, surfacing from ritualism, in sport event design is important in making an event a commercial success. At the heart of liminality in event design, in this chapter, is Victor Turner’s (1969) notion of ‘liminoid’ attached to the liminal phase originally identified by Arnold van Gennep (1960 [1908]). Lee, Brown, King, and Shipway (2016, p. 497) appreciate the role of event design in creating liminality as ‘event design can be used to enhance the liminality of the setting, to disengage people from their daily life, and to increase the emotional intensity of links with other participants’. Turner (1969), seeking to situate liminality in ‘modern times’, therefore coined the term ‘liminoid’ as an attempt to capture informal, non-traditional, and secular ritualistic behaviours. Liminoid can be applied to designing liminal experiences for sport fans participating (as spectators) in the leisure activity of sport. As Thomassen (2009, p. 15) explains ‘…“liminoid” moments [are] where creativity and uncertainty unfold in art and leisure activities … in art and leisure we recreate “life in the conditional”, playful…break from normality…a playful as-if experience’. The main focus is upon designing liminal spaces for sport events to enhance the fan as spectator experience, pre-event, during the event, and post-event. In this chapter, we will first explore the nature of liminality with a focus on related theoretical and conceptual constructs, which can be further applied to designing liminoid fan or spectator experiences in sport events. The theoretical inspections begin with van Gennep’s (1960 [1908]) initial proposal of liminality, in particular the liminal phase, which is later advanced by Victor Turner’s (1969) conceptualisations of liminality in view of liminoid occurrences. Liminality is subsequently applied to the review of rituals and related concepts—celebration, communitas, anti-structure, and symbols, which are also terms embedded in comprehensions of sport events. The chapter proceeds with a discussion of sport events as a liminal experience(s) and liminoid encounter(s) that is embedded with rituals central to celebration, communitas, performance, and symbols. This liminal space—the sport event—represents a tangible and intangible arena to which people escape to temporarily; however, we

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propose that sport fans continue to exist in a ‘liminal bubble’ seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and even years after spectating the live sport event. Therefore, from an event management practitioner perspective it is important to design sport events that creatively immerse the fan as spectator in the liminal phase by considering the entirety of the experience. In proposing strategies for designing, creatively, liminality in live sport events the paper draws upon Goffman’s (1959) theory on dramaturgy, Kotler’s (1973) conceptualisations of atmospherics, and Bitner’s (1992) application of servicescapes. Nelson (2009) recognises the interrelationships and interdependencies between dramaturgy, atmospherics and servicescapes in creative event design to make and enhance experience and emotional bonds of attendees. Further, in support of this, Ali, Ferdinand, and Chidzey (2017, p. 68) state ‘the design of an event is both an experience-maker and experience-enhancer’. We conclude that sport events are highly ritualised happenings that continue to be of significance to people, places, and populations, and the role of event managers is to create commercially and socially viable ‘fluid’ liminal spaces in which participants can exist at multiple experience points. Thus, sport fans as spectators can enter, remain, exit, and return to the liminal phase at any point of the event cycle (i.e. pre-event, during event or post-event).

The Nature of Liminality and Sport Events Arnold van Gennep (1960 [1908]) introduced the concept of liminality in the interpretation of rites of passage associated with key ritual processes of passing from one place, status, situation, or time to another. Liminality, from the Latin word ‘limen’ meaning a literal ‘threshold’, can be considered as temporal and transitionary, as individuals pass through three phases: pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal (van Gennep, 1960 [1908]). Liminality is a state—a process of either being in or passing through a period of uncertainty; a time between two spaces; a void. Thus, liminality can be considered in the context of ‘hybridity’ as one is caught in-between shifting binary positions (Neumann, 2012). This echoes the theoretical insights of the location of culture from Homi Bhabha (1994) on hybridity: the ‘third-space’, ‘ambivalence’, ‘restless’ and ‘halfway subjects’. In terms of articulation of sporting identities this state of liminal hybridity presents a space where sport fans, as spectators, are able to not feel constrained by the structure of everyday life and take on a new identity. Those in the liminal phase are ‘safe’—safe in the knowledge that their

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substantive identity will still be there for them when they return (Aching, 2010; Jaimangal-Jones, Pritchard, & Morgan, 2010). Victor Turner (1969), further inspects the practice of liminality and famously describes liminality as being ‘betwixt and between’ places, again spaces of hybridity and transition. In the betwixt and between positions ‘liminality is created by rituals’ (Negrea & Teodorescu, 2015; Voinea, Negrea, & Teodorescu, 2015, as cited in Teodorescu & Câlin, 2015, p. 98). It is clear in the works of van Gennep (1960 [1908]) and Turner (1969) that there is a symbolic relationship between liminality and ritual. Today, this continues to be of significance and of functional value to society as Teodorescu and Câlin (2015, p. 99) state ‘the concept of liminality is a product of rituals’ process; they cannot have a reaction without each other. Liminality is functioning as a tool in all aspects of the society’s rituals’. Turner (1969) positions liminality within a cultural space that is inherent in laws, customs, and ceremonies in society, which are expressed through symbolic rituals significant to people, populations, and places in social and cultural contexts. Liminality, in view of rituals, through ceremonies, performances, and symbols, is central to establishing, what Turner (1969) refers to as, ‘communitas’. It can be argued that sport events echo notions of ‘communitas’ or camaraderie and sport can be considered as a form of culture and or sub-culture, and a defining characteristic of identity for people, populations, and places. As Turner (1969, p. 113) states ‘it has become clear that the collective dimensions, communitas and structure, are to be found in all stages and levels of culture and society’. Lee, In, and Seo (2015) observe an interdependency between liminality, communitas, and team identification in a stadium, which encourages repatronage and retention of sport fans to the venue. The feeling of communitas felt among a group in the liminal space through the creation of liminoid moments can have powerful social strategic worth, that extends beyond economic incentives. Chalip (2006, 2014) highlights the social value this feeling of communitas has in terms of fostering celebration and camaraderie that can be leveraged effectively from sport events. From a social leverage perspective celebration and camaraderie are essential to creating liminality in sport events as they enable sociability, creation of event-related social events, facilitation of informal social opportunities, production of ancillary events, and theming (Chalip, 2006; O’Brien & Chalip, 2008). Further, in support of the social leverage of sport events or as a positive social impact, communitas is a tool for

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promoting social inclusion, addressing social issues, and community relations (de Haan, Faull, & Kohe, 2014; O’Brien & Chalip, 2008; Peachey, Lyras, Borland, & Cohen, 2013; Peachey, Borland, Lobpries, & Cohen, 2015; Schulenkorf & Edwards, 2012). In the liminal space, celebration is a key performative ritualistic element and abstracted from the Latin term Celebro meaning ‘to honour and to perform as in ritual’ (Goldblatt, 2011, p. 10). It can thus be suggested, based on Turner’s (1982a) statement that ‘every human society celebrates with ceremony and ritual its joys, sorrows and triumphs’ (pp. 5–6), that celebration is a precondition for people, populations, and places. Moreover, celebratory sporting events can be positioned as both public events (Matthews, 2016) and leisure events (Shone & Parry, 2013). Therefore, it can be stated that celebration is integral to the location of the liminal space in sport events because of its symbolic relationship with ritual, communitas, and symbols. Nevertheless, it is clear that the typological reach has extended beyond situating celebration within the boundaries of festivals (Matthews, 2016) and there is an appreciation of the fluidity in the conceptualisations and applications of celebration. However, this is not to suggest that sport cannot be placed in the context of festival for celebration purposes, especially if sport as festival or sport festivals are utilised as a tool for social integration. The Olympic Games, for example, are framed around four areas: spectacle, festival, ritual, game (MacAloon, 1984, as cited in Stevenson & Alaug, 2000, p. 457), as well as football having been expressed in terms of ‘carnival liminality’ (Hognestad, 2003, as cited in St John, 2008, p. 164). Sterchele and Saint-Blancat (2015) link sport festivals with the concept of carnivalesque as a non-competitive football tournament is blended with an intercultural festival—the aim to promote a liminal space that is socially inclusive. Festivals and carnivals have long been studied and are discussed in relation to liminality (Shields, 1990; Bennett & Woodward, 2014). With parallels to Bakhtin’s (1984) Carnival Mask, these events provide participants the opportunity to hide behind and articulate a new identity. It is the attraction of the liminal moment that allows this, as the new identity needs to be able to undertake behaviours different from the previous one. Sport events, and by extension sport festivals, are therefore ideal examples of liminality at work as people can escape their everyday life for a short-period of time and mask one identity for another. Within the liminal space we see the suspension of the normal rules that govern behaviour. This leaves a structural vacuum that Turner (1969) calls

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‘anti-structure’. It is this lack of structure that permits the free abandon of liminal inhabitants, and temporarily removes social status. We see this every week, as on the terraces of the football stadium, clad in the same garb of their tribe, where Doctors stand with street-sweepers all cheering together and willing for the same outcome. Hierarchies may exist, but they have been created within the liminal group by, for example, status given to those with the most knowledge of the team or the most attendance at games (Linden & Linden, 2017). The inversion of societal norms within the space inevitably means that an environment is created where taboo or normally unacceptable behaviours are practiced and accepted, albeit for a temporary period. This can sometimes manifest as tribal and violent, as with cases of football hooliganism (Giulianotti, 1999). The precise nature of anti-structure is not universally understood. Ravenscroft and Gilchrist (2009) argue that it is not an absence of structure, because the space remains governed and still constrains behaviour. They argue it is, in effect, simply replacing one form of structure with another. Aching (2010) instead suggests it is a more complex social situation that cannot be simplified as inversion or complete absence of social structure. Instead, he describes it as ‘a social milieu that is thoroughly suffused with competing political and ideological agendas’ (p. 423). Closely associated with liminality in the context of ritual is the role of symbols in communitas and celebration in establishing camaraderie among individuals and groups in social and or cultural settings. For Geertz (1973) symbols are synonymous with religion and symbols contribute to the interpretation of cultures—giving recognition to religion as a cultural system. Symbols communicate and transmit beliefs, behaviours, culture, narratives, totems, and/or values that give meaning (e.g. sacred and secular; tangible and intangible) to ritualistic performances, practices, and processes. Sport is enriched with symbolic entities (e.g. sport venue/stadium, logos, mascots, flags, anthems, sport ambassadors/celebrities/heroes/icons) which can be linked to aspects of ritualism that are present in the sport event, or what Cheska (1978) refers to as sports spectacular. Symbols, as components of ritual, are mediated in the liminal space in which the fan, as spectator, is immersed in the spectacle. Cheska (ibid.) argues: the cyclical sport event conducted as a large scale impressive public show or display can be called a sport spectacular and a social ritual of power. […] The sports spectacular as a vehicle of symbol contains the basic elements

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of ritual. According to Klapp (1956, p. 13) the elements of ritual are: 1) repetition, 2) regularity, 3) emotionality, 4) drama, 5) symbolism. (p. 62)

This link between sport spectacular and symbolism is interpreted further by Stevenson and Alaug (2000) to capture the communitas value of the Olympic Games, for competitors, spectators, and society, by the event organisers: At their most inclusive, the games are spectacles because they are imbued by the International Olympic Committee with symbolic reality, the notion that [the] nations’ participation creates global communitas. […] Rituals also convey important symbolic messages about the nature of society. (p. 457)

Sport Events and the Ritualistic Liminal Space Turner (1982b) examined sport in a liminoid context because sport was perceived as a modern and secular individualised performance that departed from van Gennep’s (1960 [1908]) theoretical conceptions of liminality. However, Rowe (2008) argues sport can be viewed as liminal as it is underpinned with ritualistic practices as there is evidence of collective performance, there is a collective spirit, and collective in community. Rowe’s (2008) explanations reflect the conceptualisations of celebration (e.g. collective spirit), communitas (e.g. collective community), and symbols (e.g. collective performance) inherent in sport events. Consequently, we continue to inspect sport events as liminal as there is a symbolic and inseparable relationship with rituals, with most sports (e.g. cricket, basketball, football) with an anthropologically rich history. Thus, sport events are embedded with ritualistic behaviours, which are performed by fans, or spectators, pre-event, during event and post-event (McDonald & Karg, 2014). Moreover, sport and sport events have been likened to a form of religion, given their deep-rooted (e.g. spiritual) connection with solidarity in the ritualistic performativity displayed by fans, as spectators, that is associated with a particular sports culture or team (Cheska, 1978; Fernández Cachán-Cruz, 2014; Serazio, 2013; van Vuuren, 2014). These rituals range from chanting, drinks before and after the sport event, or wearing team kit (McDonald & Karg, 2014). There is a sense of camaraderie among fans during a sport event, whether this is tangible (e.g. apparel, merchandise, anthems) or intangible (e.g. emotions, myths, nostalgia) as these are symbolic representations of ‘communal participation

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or group unity transcending individual existence’ (Cheska, 1978, p. 64). Lee et al. (2016) emphasise the importance of event spaces (e.g. arenas or stadiums) in developing liminality and forming communitas: ‘these places encourage casual sociability and strengthen the feeling of belonging and recognition as a member of a social group…’ (p. 495). The spaces are essential in giving meaning to individuals (Shortt, 2015), but also allows for the symbolic co-construction of meaning (Lucas, 2014). Lee et al. (2015, p. 59) identifies a significant contributor to the ritualistic liminal space in sport events—the stadium as a contributor to a ‘transcendental experience’ for the sport consumer (i.e. fan and or spectator). The transcendental encounter echoes the theoretical and conceptual perspectives of ‘flow’ in sport, proposed by Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1998), as Lee et al. (2016) state: Flow theory is based on the idea that people are most happy when they are in a state of concentration or complete absorption with an activity…The flow experience represents an extraordinary experience different from the common pleasures of everyday life…They [participants] may undergo a variety of self-transcending experiences at an event that could lead to a sense of accomplishment or transformation. (p. 495)

Although flow experience in the above quote is limited to sport event participants (i.e. athletes) the flow theory can be applied to fans as spectators because, to an extent, they are also participants in the sport venue—making (and remaking) the sportscape. The stadium is core in the transition into the liminal phase, which is not only a place of celebration, communitas, and symbols but also spectacle, drama, and festival, infiltrated with a sense of escapism. The stadium where the sport event happens is a ‘stage’ where sport fans can mask their ‘old’ identity as they declare their ‘new’ sport identity, consequently the sport venue is the physical embodiment of the ‘betwixt and between’. In the context of ritual, the transcendental space in a stadium can possibly denote a sense and feeling of spirituality as some of the measurable constructs in Lee et al.’s (2015) research, of spectators at a minor league baseball team in Texas, show for liminality: ‘attending [team] games makes me feel like I am in a new kind of world that differs from outside society’ (ibid., p. 67), communitas: ‘when I attend [team] games, I feel a sense of camaraderie’ (ibid., p. 68), and for team identification: ‘I consider myself to be a “real” fan of [the team]’ (ibid., p. 68).

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The creation of the liminal space in sport events is not limited to event organisers as there are several stakeholders involved in designing, implementing, and staging the immersive, collective, and transcendental experience. For example, the stadium (including event management and hospitality operations), the athletes/team/club, sponsors, marketers, and sport fans are key players in the establishment of liminality through ritualistic behaviour. McDonald and Karg (2014, p. 292) ascertain that ‘ritual behaviours connected to sporting events and teams are a commonplace example of “co-creation”’ in a sporting context. Co-creation suggests that fans as spectators are no longer passive observers but active participators in the liminal sport experience, whether this is before, during, and/or after an event. Lee et al. (2016, p. 494) note a movement towards ‘consumer centricity’ whereby event participants are co-creating experiences that are personalised and unique to them within the event setting. The co-creation element can be located in Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) escapist experience domain as the emphasis here is upon active engagement and a state of immersiveness is encountered, which is reflective of liminoid liminality.1 McDonald and Karg (2014) and Lee et al. (2016) recognise this experiential value of co-creation for marketing of the sport event because there is an opportunity to influence fan behaviour in terms of consumption and participation. Lee et al. (2016) propose combining core (e.g. event programme) event products with augmented event experiences (e.g. social programmes). The new Tottenham Hotspur stadium (North Tottenham, London, United Kingdom), granted permission in 2016 and opened in April 2019 (Haringey Council Services, 2016), can be regarded as an embodiment of co-creation in the delivery of core and augmented liminal experiences, such as the public square which will host fan-themed events, pop-up activations that can be explored before the football match and post-match entertainment (e.g. live music) (Tottenham Hotspur, 2020). However, liminoid liminality is not limited to the live event experience as fans attending a ‘watch party’, for example, construct ‘intermediate places’, which connects ‘place, rituals and community’—beyond the

1 Pine and Gilmore (1999) examined four domains of experience: educational, entertainment, esthetic, and escapist that transcend from passive to active, and absorption to immersion. These domains are: Educational: active participation and absorption in the setting; Entertainment: passive participation and absorption of the attendee; Esthetic: passive participation and immersion; and, Escapist: active participation and immersion.

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sport stadium (Aden et al., 2009).2 In these ‘intermediate places’ fans continue to observe (and replicate) rituals central to their sporting culture and identity such as decorating public spaces with team colours or logos, attire, and collective enactments (e.g. shouting, chanting, and dancing) (ibid.). Also, with the global reach of the social web, sport broadcasting channels and networks can connect spectators anywhere in the world to experience liminality as ‘virtual’ fans. There is a sense of what Benedict Anderson (1983) referred to as ‘imagined communities’ because ‘members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them…” (ibid., p. 6). Although Anderson’s (1983) interpretation was based upon nations and nationalism it is still relevant to interpreting communitas in sport as global (imagined) communitas can be established through ritualistic liminal moments that extend beyond physical boundaries. The extent to which the theory of liminality can be applied to ‘virtual’ fans as spectators of sport events is questionable. As those watching passively from a distance (e.g. at home) on the television or their mobile devices are not physically in the entirety of the liminoid liminal moment with other fans, rather are in a phase of ‘neo-liminality’ (MacAloon, 1984, p. 269, as cited in Lewis & Dowsey-Magog, 1993, p. 199). However, with innovation in information communications technology sport organisations are discovering ways of overcoming the neo-liminal barrier by engaging virtual fans, across the world, in the match day experience. Manchester United’s ‘Front Row’ initiative with social media platform Google+ used Google+ Hangout technology (a Skype-like, instant messaging, and video chat platform) to bring fans from countries around the world together to watch a live Manchester United home game (on 16 March 2014) in the stadium at Old Trafford (Manchester, United Kingdom) on digital screens (Swift, 2014).

Designing Sport Events for Liminal Experiences One of the most significant arguments surrounding the relationship between rituals within planned sport events is the extent to which liminality can exist and be created and managed. The interpretations above suggest ritual in sport events is central in designing liminal experiences and creating liminoid happenings in which fans as spectators can make sense 2 See Aden et al. (2009) for similarities between imagined community and intermediate places.

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of themselves or their environment. Therefore, liminality is, in essence, the most fundamental concept that must be considered before an event can be designed and should also be present before, during, and after the sport event–bearing in mind the ‘liminal bubble’ in which sport fans live. Event design of sport events for liminal experiences should aim to capture celebration, communitas and symbols throughout the liminal cycle. There are different ways in which liminality can be designed into an event experience and event organisers need to consider these ways to ensure they are protected within the conceptualisation and conception of event design. In order to design sport events for liminal experiences this chapter draws upon the principles and practices of dramaturgy (Goffman, 1959), atmospherics (Kotler, 1973), and servicescapes (Bitner, 1992), as identified for event design by Ali (2012) and Ali et al. (2017). All three conceptualisations direct event design practice to activate the immersive liminal space in terms of experiences that stimulate emotions, human senses, and interactivity. These three main areas (i.e. drama, atmosphere, and the service encounter) will be considered as they can be closely aligned with celebration, communitas, and symbols that are embodied in the ritualistic liminal space. The proposed sport event design strategies to produce liminal experiences build on the managerial recommendations given by several authors (Chalip, 2006; Cheska, 1978; Lee et al., 2015). Cheska (1978) advances Klapp’s (1956) five elements (repetition, regularity, emotionality, drama, and symbolism) of ritual by applying them to sports spectacular—of relevance to this chapter is emotionality, drama, and symbolism. Lee et al. (2015) encourage event practitioners to create an atmosphere that creates a sense of celebration and celebratory atmosphere through stadium theming to arouse the five senses. In creating liminality associated with celebration and camaraderie for purposes of social leverage, Chalip (2006) suggests for social interaction sport events should aim to: ‘enable sociability, create event-related social-events, and facilitate informal social opportunities’ and for celebration: also ‘facilitate informal social opportunities, produce ancillary events, and theme widely’. (p. 114)

Those involved in the design, planning, and management of sport events should aim to create the liminal space by applying the principles and practices of Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgy, which, using the metaphor of theatrical performance, identifies that human interaction is dependent on a time, a place, and an audience. These three elements create a stage,

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framing the expected values, norms and beliefs, guiding the behaviour of individuals who in turn create a front that aligns with their surroundings (Goffman, 1974). In drama or theatrical acts, according to Nelson (2009) the actors are the designers and providers of experiences/services and the audience are the event attendees. However, we would consider sport fans also as actors, bearing in mind the premise of co-creation, because fans are active participants in designing their own/individualised experiences. To design a dramaturgical experience, it is recommended that sport event planners theme sport events in the physical settings (e.g. stadium) and place (e.g. location) where the event is staged. Theming in sport event design has been recognised by several authors as critical to emotionality, escapism, and experience (Chalip, 2006; Fernández & Cachán-Cruz, 2014; Lee et al., 2015), which further boosts feelings of celebration, communitas, and symbolism. The theming of a sport event should not be limited to the arena, stadium, or venue where it is being hosted as liminality can be encountered before, during, and after an event; subsequently rituals are not confined to specific settings. It may not be possible to theme the entire physical setting and place for a sport event, therefore event planners should work with sport facility managers, destination management organisations, and local businesses, to design specific areas or parts of the event, embedding the theme as widely as possible. With reference to the facets of design presented in Silvers’ (2007) Event Management Body of Knowledge (EMBOK), sport event practitioners can theme catering, content, entertainment, environment, production, and programme. For example, in addition to sport cafes and bars, food and beverage both in and outside the stadium can be themed to reflect the sport event that is being hosted. As Fernández and CachánCruz (2014) observe in their study of the embodiment of ritualistic practice in sporting environments, menus can be designed innovatively, where dishes were presented under first half, second half, and extra time sections. This intertwines two ritualistic practices, consumption of food and the structure of the sport event, and thus ensures that the event theme can be experienced in every part of the event. Closely associated with dramaturgy is Kotler’s (1973) atmospherics, which determines the atmosphere and ambience of the sport event and plays an important role in creating the celebratory and festive components in the liminal space. Atmospherics, in Kotler’s (1973) work, can be closely aligned with the senses of sight, smell, taste, sound, and touch; thus sensory experience can activate emotions through participation in an event.

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As ‘ritual makers’ (Cheska, 1978) or ‘ritual specialists’ (McDonald & Kang, 2014, p. 299), event designers (and sport fans) need to create (and co-create) liminal spaces, which on the one hand facilitate ritualism and on the other hand activate sensory experiences. Event practitioners need to consider matters of atmospherics beyond the sport facility where the event is being staged, as it appears the atmosphere and ambience or ‘feel’ for the sport event emerges long before the fans arrive at the stadium. The importance of the journey to and from the event has been shown to enhance the liminal experience (Foster & McCabe, 2015; Jaimangal-Jones et al., 2010; Luckman, 2014). Also, depending on the result of a competitive sport fixture, fans continue to celebrate/commiserate after the closing of the sport event. McDonald and Karg (2014), inspecting ritualised spectator behaviour, observed fan organised activities; such as organised marches moving towards the venue and post-game congregations in pubs and bars. For event managers there is ample opportunity to capitalise on pre-, during and post-sport event rituals of ‘togetherness’ and ‘inclusivity’ by enhancing the existing celebratory and festive atmosphere. In doing so, Chalip (2006) recommends the facilitation of informal social opportunities in order to embrace liminality, which in turn produces communitas. A possible celebratory event that could complement the sport event is a festival, which can be themed around the sport event that will, is or has taken place. There are ample ways in which sport events could be enhanced with festivities, such as the display of club/team/national colours, the use of artefacts or memorabilia associated with the cultural and historical context of the sport event, themed food, sport competitions and games, sport heroes (past and present), meeting and greeting fans, and sport-themed music. Today, sport venues provide ample opportunities to stage event day themed festivals in and around the facility, especially considering new stadium developments (e.g. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, and United Kingdom) which will have designated social spaces for attendees and non-attendees. Finally, drawing together dramaturgy and atmospherics is Bitner’s (1992) servicescapes, which foster emotionality and interactivity, and contributes to the ambience (e.g. music), operational (e.g. venue layout) and symbolic (e.g. brands/sponsors/partners) aspects of the sport event. As the event management industry becomes more professional, so too has the sophistication to which sport venue and event managers approach the development of their craft. While Brown and James (2004) were right to identify that, in the 1990s, there was a primacy to the economics

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of an event, since then, event managers are increasingly aware that servicescapes are now a requirement of a successful event. The concept of servicescapes draws attention to the relationship between the business (i.e. sport venue and events) and consumer (i.e. sports fan), where there is a negation of the tangible dimensions (e.g. physical environment) and intangible elements (e.g. emotions) associated with consumption. The physical environment in a sport venue can comprise of ‘layout accessibility, facility aesthetics, seating comfort, electronic equipment, [and] facility cleanliness’ (Fernandes & Neves, 2014, p. 5). Emotions can be attached to ‘reliability, empathy, assurance, responsiveness’ (Wakefield & Blodgett, 1999, as cited in Wakefield & Blodgett, 2016, p. 687). In the sport facility, servicescapes appear to be vast and extensive and can be considered to define the service encounter between the sport fan, the stadium, the sport/sport team or club, and the event. For event planners to provide an emotionally charged and interactive encounter it is proposed that sport venues and event managers create liminal spaces through partner or sponsorship activation initiatives. Penna and Guenzi (2014) observe a ‘trend in sponsorship … the growth of activations, that is, the marketing activities a company conducts to promote its sponsorship (also known as leverage)’ (p. 134). Sponsors and partners use various strategies to communicate their brand to consumers such as product giveaways, competitions, and social media/digital initiatives—before, during, and after the sport event. In this case liminal spaces can be created for fans that foster transcendental fan experiences at the stadium and destination, and co-created with the sponsor, sport venue, and spectator. For example, at the London Rugby Sevens Championships (20–21 May 2017) Samsung presented their ‘Samsung Slider’—an innovative seated ride with friction movements, which brought fans closer to the action (Pickup, 2017).

Conclusion We began this chapter rejecting the idea that ritual had been lost in modern events. Instead, we have proposed that events, and sport events in particular, are highly ritualised. By using this ritualisation, event managers can create meaningful liminal event experiences. The nature of the liminal space surrounding sport events however adopts a more contemporary liminoid character. It represents a ‘fluid’ liminality, where participants can enter and exit the liminal space. This requires a new conceptualisation of liminality, considering the entire event experience. In the development

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of a liminal space, symbols are very important in communicating meaning and provide a vital tool in developing the legitimacy of the sport event liturgy. This also extends to the physical space, which can allow for co-construction of meaning, as well as signalling new structural norms. While the importance of ritual in historical and religious events was never in doubt, we have demonstrated here that ritual plays a vital part in the design of sport events. This builds on the original theories of van Gennep (1960 [1908]) and Turner (1969) through the application of more up to date concepts that consider the importance of co-creation and the fluidity of the liminal space. There is no reason why this logic could not be broadened further to include a range of other non-secular event types. This holds implications for both management practitioners and event management research. Our discussion contains a number of implications for managers of sport events. Organisers, being aware that liminal spaces allow for the suspension of the rules that normally govern behaviour, must be prepared to manage unexpected and sometimes unacceptable conduct. Organisers can manage this through first designing spaces that allow for co-creation of meaning, and subsequently signal new structural norms. This has the added benefit of allowing them to take advantage of marketing opportunities, as well as ways to deepen the customer relationship through dramaturgy, immersion, and atmospheric strategies. There is also significant scope to further improve the academic literature, through our understanding of the relationship between liminality and the design of sporting events. We suggest this could be achieved in three ways. First, through more empirical research focused specifically on a sporting event context. This research is likely to be qualitative in nature and seek to understand the complexities of the world in which the sports spectator exists. Second, there is scope for the greater application of social theory to sporting events. Doing so will help to conceptualise phenomena beyond the specific locale of study. There is a particular need to more comprehensively understand the relationship between liminality and structure, especially considering what happens in the absence of structure, and the implications this has for individual agency. This would help understand concepts such as the nature of the identity of the sports event spectator, and the interaction between them and the event. Finally, there is an opportunity for close working between researchers and sport management

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professionals, to develop practical tools and research that is useful to practitioners. This could take the form of action research, where researchers use these theoretical insights to help practitioners to develop and test different designs or environments to improve the liminal experience.

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CHAPTER 5

The Privilege of Subversion Reading Experiences of LGBT-Themed Events During Hull UK City of Culture 2017 Through Liminality

Barbara Grabher

Introducing the Privilege of Subversion From the 22nd to the 29th of July 2017, a celebratory atmosphere took over Hull’s city centre through the LGBT50 festivities. As part of the UK City of Culture in 2017, the week-long celebration became a crucial element within the 365 days of transformative culture offered by the culture company of Hull2017 Ltd. The event series set out as a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. The first ever UK Pride Parade and Party initiated the week of celebrations and was followed by thematically focused lectures, film screenings, performances, and exhibitions. In the closing act, the central square was converted into an outdoor summer tea party. As the promotional material suggested, ‘Celebrate heroes past, freedoms

B. Grabher (B) Marie Curie Research Fellow GRACE Project Horizon 2020, University of Hull, Hull, UK © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_5

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gained and show solidarity with continuing struggles for LGBT equality at home and everywhere’ (Hull2017 Ltd., 2017), the commemorative event series located itself between the past and the present—celebrating changing realities but simultaneously inspiring further transformations for LGBT communities in the city, the country, and globally. Commemorative, celebratory, and transformative interests collapse in the LGBT-themed event series. My interest lies with the politics of the party, as Browne (2007) suggests. Interested in the political, transformative potential for gender, and sexuality through the LGBT50 celebrations, I analyse the festivities through Turner’s (1969, 1974, 1982, 1987a, 1987b, 1989) concept of liminality. In an ethnographic study of the commemorative week, I explore and embed the experiences of cultural actors and visitors within the liminal considerations of the event framework. I highlight how liminal experiences of LGBT50 effect the production of gendered and sexualised meanings on a personal, political, and imaginary level (Browne, 2007). While such analytical structure reflects well the current scholarly canons, my empirical material invites further debates of the conceptual approach. In reference to theoretical critiques and empirical examples, I illustrate the limitations of liminality. Guided by the empirical material collected in LGBT50, I demonstrate that liminal experiences and expressions are a privilege. I argue that the supposedly radical, transgressive potential of liminality in LGBT-themed events faces exclusionary restrictions as subversive and disciplining practices are simultaneously enacted on festive occasions. The discussion is, firstly, initiated by an introduction of the research field and methods. Secondly, I conceptually address liminality in relation to celebratory events and particular LGBT-themed festivities. Thirdly, I draw upon the accounts of research participants in order to respond to the conceptual considerations. I close the chapter with a discussion of the resulting conceptual and empirical discrepancies, which immediately affects the liminal, political potential aspired to by LGBT50.

Situating the Research This chapter derives from the investigation ‘Gendering Cities of Culture’, which forms part of the GRACE project (Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe). My research focuses on culture-led mega-events such as the national title ‘UK City of Culture’ and international title ‘European Capital of Culture’ and questions their production of socio-cultural values

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with particular attention to gender equality. Hull, in its execution of the title in 2017, serves as a field site of the study.

Field Kingston upon Hull, referred to as Hull, is situated in the county of Yorkshire in the northeast of England, at the junction of the Humber Estuary and Hull River. Dealing with the socio-economic consequences of being a post-industrial city, the bidding, selection, and execution of the UK City of Culture is an essential element within the city’s regeneration plan. ‘A city coming out of its shadows’ served as motivation for the selection panel’s decision in 2013 to grant the ‘badge of authority and national spotlight’ of the title to the city (BBC News, 2013a, 2013b; Hull Daily Mail, 2014; Redmond, 2009). The final evaluation calculated that the year included more than 2800 events, cultural activities, installations, and exhibitions (Culture Place and Policy Institute, 2018, p. 70). During the year of promised transformative culture, LGBT50 created a focal point and contributed to the programme slogan of ‘Freedom’. LGBT50 framed as an umbrella encompassing ten different activities established by multiple stakeholders including, among others, the culture company Hull2017 Ltd., local charity Pride in Hull, and London-based queer arts collective Duckie (Hull2017 Ltd., 2017). While the week created a festival experience from an empirical perspective, from an organisational point of view the festivities were outlined as a series of events. Therefore, I use the generic terms of ‘event’, ‘event series’, ‘festivities’ and/or ‘celebrations’ as descriptors of LGBT50. In the past fifteen years, the local charity Pride in Hull established LGBT-themed events in the city with particular focus on Pride Parades and Parties. Through hosting the first ever UK Pride Parade with 1500 parading participants followed by an outdoor party with 44,000 visitors, the event’s scale and size exceeded any previous experiences or expectations. The event and the following series increased visibility for gender and sexual minorities within the city and attracted media attention beyond the regional boundaries (Pride in Hull, 2018). In addition to the largescale Pride celebration, the LGBT50 festivities actively engaged Hull’s LGBT population in multiple community projects. Initiated by Duckies and their affiliated artists, the craft workshop ‘50 Years for 50 Queers’ and community dance project ‘Into the Light’ in association with Yorkshire

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Dance, fostered civic ownership and active participation of the community in the LGBT50 celebrations (Duckie, 2017; Yorkshire Dance, 2017).

Methods The emerging field of event studies, and particularly methodological developments in critical event studies, serves to orient my work (Dashper, 2016; Finkel, McGillivray, McPherson, & Robinson, 2013; Finkel & Sang, 2016; Holloway, Brown, & Shipway, 2010; Laing & Mair, 2015; Lamond & Platt, 2016; Spracklen & Lamond, 2016). Due to my focus on experiential accounts of celebratory events, ethnographic methods appeal to my qualitative research interests. I work with in-depth interviewing techniques and participatory observation as core methods in the following analysis. The ethnographically informed collaborative practice of ‘observing participants’ was developed explicitly for the purpose of this study (Grabher, 2018). In total, eleven cultural actors and visitors contribute to the analysis presented below. I am attentive to the different positionalities throughout the research participation but allow the two perspectives to imbricate as politics, practices, and perceptions of the event merge. I use pseudonyms to refer to all participants. In representation of their professional capacities, I address cultural actors through their job titles and affiliated organisations or projects.

Celebrating Gender and Sexuality Events studies and gender studies are entangled in my conceptual interpretation of the LGBT50 event series. Markwell and Waitt (2013) remark that investigations of festive events primarily engage with a lens of national, ethnic, and racial contextualisations of the subject matter; little attention is given to the relationship of events, gender, and sexuality. The subject is limited in its extent and history, but scholars in the field argue that festive sites illustrate these imbrications in multiple ways (Pielichaty, 2015). Particular events—predominantly LGBT Pride celebrations—generate rich discussions on the negotiations of gender and sexuality in festive contexts (Ammaturo, 2016; Baker, 2015, 2017; Browne, 2007; Eder, Staggenborg, & Sudderth, 1995; Hahm, Ro, & Olson, 2018; Hubbard & Wilkinson, 2015; Johnston, 2007; Kates, 2003; Kates & Belk, 2001; Kenttamaa Squires, 2017; Luongo, 2002; Markwell, 2002; Markwell &

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Waitt, 2009; Richards, 2016; Waitt & Gorman-Murray, 2008; Waitt & Stapel, 2011). For my analytical interest, I turn to anthropological conceptualisations of festivities and focus specifically on Turner’s approach to liminality. In my gendered and sexualised reading of LGBT-themed events, the temporal and transgressive characteristics of liminality guide my analysis. The festive experience is conceptualised as a ‘time out of time’, as Falassi (1987) suggests. The exceptional circumstances of the festive stands in contrast to the daily routine. Additionally, Turner (1987b) outlines this temporal character in spatial terms: Truly [the festival] is the denizen of a place that is no place, and a time that is no time, even where that place is a city’s main plaza and that time can be found on an ecclesiastical calendar. For the squares, avenues and streets of the city become, in [the festive occasion], the reverse of their daily selves. (p. 76)

Consequently, festive experiences are seen as a time out of time in a place out of place. Festival times and spaces are in the moment of festivities bound to a different reality, which disturbs and interrupts the continuum of day to day routines. Hand in hand with temporal and spatial interruptions, I regard celebrations as generators of norms out of the norm. Turner describes the interruption simply: ‘[…] in liminality people ‘play’ with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarise them’ (Turner, 1974, p. 60). Furthermore, I consider liminality as abundance, reconsideration, and transgression of existent normative structures. Therefore, these acts of ‘defamiliarisation’ hold a potential of transgression and subversion of hegemonic normative structures, which creates a social limbo. The social structures, norms, and relationships are discontinued; common rights and obligations suspended; boundaries re-defined; psychological and sociological constructs overridden; the social order appears to be turned upside down. Abrahams (1987) elucidates: Festivals manufacture their own energies by upsetting things, creating a disturbance for the fun of it. […] Festivals work (at least in their inception) by apparently tearing the fabric to pieces, by displaying it upside-down, inside-out, wearing it as motley rags and tatters. (p. 178)

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Beyond the temporal, spatial, and transgressive characteristics of liminality, Turner regards different types of festivities and their experiences. Dependent on the objective settings and circumstances of celebrations, he distinguishes between liminal and liminoid experiences. Based on the dualism of the sacred and the profane, Thomassen (2009) synthesises this distinction through the transitory feature, which is key to liminality. Therefore, liminal experiences are directed towards a change of status. Meanwhile, rather than directed towards resolution, the liminoid experience is ‘a break from normality, a playful as-if experience’ (Thomassen, 2009, p. 13). Leisure activities and in particular LGBTthemed celebrations are predominantly discussed as liminoid experiences and circumstances. The participation is voluntary and its liminal experience optional, as the occasion does not aim for a resolution or transition. Rather, the creation of an experience of altered norms in the moment of celebration is the objective of the festive encounter. Independent of their liminal or liminoid characterisation, the temporal, spatial, and transgressive characteristics of disturbance of the daily routines serve as anchor point for my analytical interest and reading of LGBT-themed events. According to Turner’s conceptualisations, festive practices indicate a potential for the re-evaluation of power dynamics. Shifting structures enables explorations of alternative models of living. Turner (1974) argues for the necessity of such breaking points in strictly structured and stratified societies. He proclaims society’s desires to become visible within the liminal expressions of festive encounters. Therefore, I understand liminal experiences as an active and creative momentum, which allows the individuals, the collective and society as a whole to explore and negotiate alternatives to the dominant status quo. The transgressive, subversive potential of liminality gained popularity in scholarly discussions and studies of LGBT spaces and communities (Standstrom, 2002; Thumma & Gray, 2005; Villarejo, 2003). Explorations of alternative models of living respond to the negotiations of marginalised expressions and identifications of gender and sexuality. Liminal experiences generate a discussion about gender and sexual relations beyond the heteronormative binary. With particular hindsight on celebratory events, Kates (2003) and Browne (2007) illustrate such considerations of liminality in LGBT-themed events. Kates (2003) outlines the subversive potential of liminal characteristics of events through his analysis of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sidney. He highlights how the

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event invites renegotiation of conventional meanings of gender and sexuality. Browne (2007) further elaborates on the debate, as she suggests that genders and sexuality are (de)constructed through the conditions that the festive event creates. In her analysis of LGBT Pride events in Dublin and Brighton, she strengthens the argument by pointing out that the festive mood invites critical questioning of gendered and sexualised codes.

Liminal Experiences of LGBT50 Similar to Kates’ (2003) and Browne’s (2007) illustrations, empirical accounts of the LGBT50 celebrations allow me to explore liminality as a crucial experiential feature in the celebration of gender and sexuality. The subversive and temporal characteristics formulate a strong narrative in the research participants’ experiences of the celebratory week. Cheerful, joyful narrations collate with descriptors such as ‘powerful, magical and transformative’ (Luke, 30s, male, choreographer, Yorkshire Dance). For research purposes, Hull resident Daniel (30s, male) visits for the first time a LGBT-themed event in the UK. He situates himself in solidarity with the LGBT Movement but does not identify as part of the community. His summary of participating in the UK Pride Parade and Party strongly speaks of liminal experiences, as he outlines: We abolish all rules and we break all taboos and we just do whatever we want. Gay pride would be some kind of artificial carnival or not artificial, rather a very purposeful carnival. Yes, it is a carnival in the proper term of avoiding all the taboos because we want to address all our sexuality and show the world that we want to be able to express our sexuality openly. (Conversation: Daniel)

From a visitor’s point of view, Daniel’s narration captures the transgressive atmosphere, which affects interpretations and expressions of sexuality. With reference to the carnival, Daniel establishes a relationship between two events in order to contextualise his experiences with an associative event framework. On a conceptual level, such an associative relationship situates the narration as an expression of a liminal experience. Daniel’s depiction resonates with the organisational interests of Pride in Hull, as outlined by one of the trustees, Jacob (40s, male). Jacob outlines that the charity shares a strong interest and awareness of the transgressive and subversive potential that LGBT-themed events entail. Focusing on the

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UK Pride Parade and Party, play with gendered, and sexualised meanings is declared as a key element in their conceptualisation of the event. Therefore, the organisers explicitly grant space and time for such explorations during the event. The transgressive, subversive experiences and organisational concerns connect immediately to temporal considerations of liminality. The abovereferenced research participants critically engage with the relevance of time in the event setting. Daniel refers to the temporality of the event experience in the following statement: ‘[In the event] we do crazy things because we can. Does it mean that we do that every day of our lives? No’. Daniel repeats the dualistic notion of liminal temporality as addressed theoretically through the ‘time out of time’ classification. He locates the transgressive potential in a timed context, which is opposed to the daily routines. ‘Doing crazy things’ becomes a momentary experience confined within the freedom of the temporal unit of the festivity. From an organisational point of view, Pride in Hull Trustee Jacob shares his observations of temporality as follows: I know some people will do gender blurring when they are at pride, because there is kind of a permission to do that and more acceptable than maybe walking down on the street on an average day and not being in a party mood. (Conversation: Jacob)

The former declaration of organisational awareness of transgressive behaviour is further reasoned in the considerations of liminal temporality. In the space-time of the celebrations, certain expressions of gender and sexuality take place, which might not be enacted in other contexts. Similarly to Daniel, Jacob situates the festivity in a separate temporality, which resonates with the ‘time out of time’ model. The two statements indicate a temporal separation and simultaneously refer to an exceptional setting in which formerly addressed subversive atmospheres and behaviours are accepted, permitted, and to some extent even expected. Therefore, on an empirical level, the ‘time out of time’ is associated with the subversive potential, and it strongly determines the experiences and considerations of LGBT50. The voices of such participants create an entrance point for the exploration of the LGBT50 celebrations and its liminal features of subversive and temporal characteristics. However, in the study of gender, sexuality, and celebrations through liminal perspectives, the empirical material

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invites further explorations of the liminality beyond the prominent temporal and subversive characteristics. Below, I seek to understand how liminality and its transgressive, temporal effects affect cultural actors and visitors of LGBT50 on a personal, political, and imaginary level of gendered and sexualised meanings. Hereby, I follow Browne’s (2007) analytical framework, as she explores the individual and collective impacts of liminal event experience for LGBT communities in Pride Parades and Parties in Dublin and Brighton.

Living Liminality Browne’s (2007) first analytical perspective addresses liminality as a lived experience. Gendered and sexualised explorations of liminality affect individuals as well as collectives, as Thomassen (2009) argues. Therefore, the lived experience of liminality shapes gendered and sexualised perceptions of the self as well as the celebratory community. Even though perceptions, impressions, and explorations are reflected upon by the different entities at different levels, liminality leaves its imprint on an individual as well as on a collective level. The personal influence was a crucial point of discussion for organisers as well as visitors during LGBT50. In various circumstances, individual trajectories were celebrated as factors of success and legitimacy for the event. The diverse empirical material highlights liminality on a personal level. Due to space restrictions, I want to focus on Sophia’s (40s, female) narrative about her experiences of visiting LGBT50. Sophia is a very engaged citizen of Hull. As the quotation below indicates, she identifies with the LGBT community through her experience of transitioning genders. She regards the development of LGBT50 with a certain surprise and hesitations, as her personal experiences of Hull counters the progressive, inclusive and LGBT-friendly image, which the celebrations promote. In preparation for, as well as during, the celebrations, Sophia engaged very actively with the festivities. The following statement summarises her transformative experiences on a very personal level: I can see how and why the LGBT50 celebrations begin to relate to me and how through [a] learning [process], I could understand more about who I am. [I could understand] my own sort of confused understandings for being an LGBT person in the twenty-first century in Hull; […] something

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of my LGBT-ness and something of my T-ness. It has sort of unlocked a lot of different things. (Conversation: Sophia)

Sophia’s narrative illustrates that gender is a lived experience, a social construct influenced and formed by social realities, which on liminal celebratory occasions are shaped, explored and further (de)constructed. Her empirical insight resonates with Markwell and Waitt’s (2013) analysis of festive events. They point out gender and sexual identities are never preset. As Sophia shows through her experiences and the scholars argue in their analysis, liminal experiences of festivities create a space-time, in which identities can be (re)explored and developed. As a social construct, gender, and sexuality are further influenced through the communities. Following her personal account of living, exploring, and negotiating gender and sexuality through LGBT50, Sophia further reflects upon the collective experiences, she shared with other residents: I think it allowed people to come out of themselves so much – to feel like they could be in that environment and be themselves. It was so special, so special. We did; we became a family, did we not? Very supportive, we were all one, one people, one voice. (Conversation: Sophia)

Her reflections refer to the participation in the community dance project ‘Into the Light’ and illustrate a collective expression of identity through the notion of familiarity. In addition to Sophia’s impressions, all cultural actors are very explicit about their interest and intentions for creating a collective experience, in which personal as well as collective explorations of gender and sexuality can occur. Jess (60s, male), artistic director and lead artist of the crafts project ‘Fifty Queers for Fifty Years’, outlines his aspiration to create a platform in which encounters can happen. He elucidates: I wanted [the workshop] to be a coming together of people within the LGBT community. Experiencing each other in a creative, different way than what they would do normally. […] There is very rarely opportunities like [this craft workshop, where people] come together and actually being creative and making something and expressing something that is about you and about your history. (Conversation: Jess)

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As indicated in his statement, he hopes to create encounters under the light of crafting as a collective. The communal act of coming-together is central to his vision of the project and links into the events atmosphere creating a liminal experience for each individual engaged with the crafting collective. Within this community approach, the artist continues further, as he outlines the political interests that shape such communal encounters: I mean how rich is that [coming-together]. I wanted this whole thing to be this big transformative experience for people to come together […] and as we have been saying, when you are making things you are able to talk much more freely. There is a warmth in general in working like that. (Conversation: Jess)

This final statement on the effects, impacts, and aspirations links already the personal and political level of liminal experiences and the explorations of gender and sexuality. Similarly, Browne (2007) suggests that the lived experience of gender and sexuality in liminal event settings reaches beyond the immediate personal into the political sphere. While understanding the personal as political, liminality, and its political implication for gender and sexuality allow me to discuss the impact, relevance, and need for LGBT-themed events.

Doing Politics Through Liminality Following Browne (2007), in my further analysis, I address liminality in its political practice. While I understand the personal as political, the reference to politics hereby rather addresses the urban, regional, and national political developments. Associations between LGBT-themed events and political aspirations are historically built. In its very existence, LGBT50 refers to the historical and present struggles for rights of gender and sexual minorities. Therefore, I further explore the political potential and aspiration of the liminal festive framework. The political narrative centres on the relevance of visibility. Brian (40s, male), Hull2017 producer leading the project of LGBT50, captures this narrative and underlying intention as follows: I do not think you get the opportunity to take over the city centre square and give it to a marginalised group of people and say it is yours for the day and we are going to pump a lot of investment into the best artists to

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make sure it is a very special one for you. Those [opportunities] do not come along. […] That is what attracts me to it. (Conversation: Brian)

The producer highlights the relevance of the space, investment, and competencies as key effects for the political potential that the event creates. Additionally, he reasons his own interest in the project through such presence and visibility. While the rhetoric of visibility might indicate a ‘The Bigger, The Better’ ideology, Brian expresses clearly that his and the team’s intention is to introduce nuanced gender and sexual politics. Rather than quantitative, his interest is a qualitative visibility, which subverts mainstream narratives in subtle, gentle ways. He expressed initial hesitations in the appointment of the project due to its mainstream characteristics. However, the visibility, its related influence and liminal characteristics were a convincing element for his interests and commitment. The politically nuanced representation and continuous visibility allowed an ‘In your face’ (Sophia, 40s, female) effect. Sophia explains her enjoyment of the event series and its inherent political messages as unusual topics and issues receive wider attention in the city, region and even nation: These issues are not normally talked about in public. Yes, you might go and talk about these issues in a gallery through some art work or whatever. But you are not going to talk about them on a Saturday afternoon, while people have got their bags from Tesco or whatever. This is in your face, being on your doorstep right there. (Conversation: Sophia)

Just as Sophia suggests, associated, and contributing artists similarly express appreciation for the opportunity to leave political echo chambers and engage with different communities. Thus, visibility strategies shift away from solely regarding tangible manifestation of ‘doing politics’ through claiming spaces, infrastructures, and monetary resources. Rather, research participants suggest a visibility and political potential through intangible strategies involving communities and different knowledges. LGBT50 explicitly embraced spatial, communitarian, and therefore political visibility.

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Creating Imaginaries Through Liminality Yeah. So, we are creating memory. I think we are creating dreams and memories. (Conversation: Jacob)

Linking the personal experience with the political potential of events, the comment by Pride in Hull trustee Jacob introduces the imaginary potential formulated within LGBT-themed events. Sourcing from liminality, the transgressive attitudes are thought to reformulate social boundaries, exploring alternative models of living. The narrative accounts of research participants introduced such levels within the LGBT50 celebrations. Looking beyond the immediate personal and political effects of such celebrations, the exploration, and imagination of alternatives to hegemonic societal structures were omnipresent in the experiences and motivations of visitors and cultural actors. The Summer Tea Party, as the final act of the week-long celebration, was set in such considerations, as one of the producers explains: It is our responsibility […] we want to socially engineer a better society […] we queer and […] we are a bit out of mainstream of society, and we are very creative as queer. (Conversation: Oliver)

Oliver relates the imaginary potential of the event to a queer ethos underlying his own professional capacities and the event’s narratives. The imaginary potential, therefore, frames the event. Doing things differently, outside the mainstream channels but simultaneously within the mainstream infrastructures informs his work, intentions, and aspirations, which open perspectives for future imaginaries.

Liminal Restrictions---Or the Privilege of Subversion The above analysis of empirical material illustrates the immediacy and relevance of liminality within the celebration of the LGBT-themed event series LGBT50. The key characteristics of temporality and transgression are continuously present within the festivities. Furthermore, I outlined how liminality can be read into the personal, political, and imaginary perceptions of gender and sexuality in the festivities according to the

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subjects of the individual and the collective. Even though, this empirical evidence supports the conceptual approach formulated through Turner’s (1969, 1974, 1982, 1987a, 1987b, 1989) liminality, the research material requires me to address conceptual and empirical critiques of the concept and its implication. While the commercialisation of LGBT equality in event industries is widely debated and discussed (Taylor, 2014), I am directing my attention towards the political limitations inherent in a liminal reading of LGBT-themed events. The critical discussion is urged on by Alex’s (20s, male) reflections of his visit to the LGBT50 festivities. Expressed in various ways, the majority of the research participants agree with Alex’s doubt: Suddenly we are all gay, we are all friendly and we are all happy. But I know people […] that struggle day to day to be as they want to be on the streets in Hull. I read comments of people struggling and being bullied on the street. So these people a day before the pride and the day after pride would be bullied. […] There was a part in me, which is just like of course you are going to go to LGBT50 […] This is the one issue where you are ok to go out and be a social justice warrior and yea let’s all party. […] This is one issue where everybody is coming out to party and say wow look how well we have done. […] But how many people in that street are actually going to protest. (Conversation: Alex)

Alex formulates the restrictions of liminal readings of LGBT-themed events. His reflection introduces the question: ‘Where, when and who can be transgressive in order to explore and negotiate gendered and sexual norms and relations?’ Informed and inspired by this question through empirical sources, I turn to conceptual debates for further explorations of the critique. Aching (2010), Kendall (2006), Pielichaty (2015), and Ravenscroft and Gilchrist (2009) allow me to formulate a conceptual response to the empirical reflection. While using liminality for analytical purposes when looking at various events in different contexts and interests, the four scholars critique the conceptual framework of liminality through the disciplining mechanism in place. Pielichaty highlights: ‘This juxtaposes the festival between celebratory chaos and a social vehicle employed to maintain order and discipline’ (Pielichaty, 2015, p. 239). The disciplining practice is a rather subtle characteristic, which marks both the temporal and transgressive potential of liminality.

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Aching (2010) and Pielichaty (2015) focus on the disciplining restrictions implied in the liminal temporality. Aching (2010) notes that the conceptualisations of liminality rely on a strict binary between the normal or ordinary and the abnormal or subversive. Alex (20s, male) points to such an exclusionary binary as he addresses ‘the day before and after the celebrations’. Pielichaty synthesises the risk of such a dualistic interpretation, as she points out: ‘Providing individuals with liminal space to momentarily lose themselves and behave in a care-free manner promotes the ethos of chaos as limited, constrained and restrictive’ (Pielichaty, 2015, p. 239). Alex’s (20s, male) observations in combination with Aching’s (2010) and Pielichaty’s (2015) discussion suggests transgressions are not only temporally restricted but are also continue to be conceptualised as abnormal. In the context of LGBT50 and LGBTthemed events in general, such conceptualisations are contradictory to the purpose of the celebrations themselves. The celebration of marginalised gender and sexual identities, communities and expressions are being permitted for a liminal, fixed timeframe. However, such permitted phases are still conceptualised as abnormal, which continues to mark LGBT-themed events in ‘otherness’, as Kendall (2006) elucidates. In order to understand the consequences of these conceptual implications, I turn the discussion towards Kendall’s (2006) and Ravenscroft and Gilchrist’s (2009) consideration of the festive communities in LGBT-themed events. These scholars’ question for whom the liminal momentum serves. While Turner (1974) argues that the sustainability of the creative atmosphere comes into society through the imagination of societal desires, Ravenscroft and Gilchrist (2009) highlight that subversion only serves the hegemonic mainstream. They point out that alternate, subverted structures, norms, and conventions are explored within the knowledge and security of returning to routine again. Empirically and conceptually speaking, they question how liminality affects individuals and groups for whom transgressive liberties are not just a practice in a ‘time out of time’. Identities for whom daily survival is the subversion of normative structures seem little regarded in the liminal conceptualisation of celebratory events. Kendall synthesises the critique as she points out: ‘While dominant groups voluntarily enter the liminal time/space with an attitude of playfulness, the ritually marginalized are forced to masquerade in perpetual liminality’ (Kendall, 2006, p. 14). Even though the imagination of alternative models of living would be explicitly relevant for marginalised individuals and communities,

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vulnerable identities are further scrutinised as their daily transgression are accepted and promoted by hegemonic structures only in restricted, controlled occasions of the festivity. Anna (30s, female), a visitor in the LGBT50 celebrations, reflects on such risk, as she expresses: Probably very easily, LGBT-themed event can lead this struggle towards some nice plastic fantastic product, where again many people would not find themselves. Then those, once again, would be outside of this and this box would just continue of this little bubble [of hegemony]. (Conversation: Anna)

Conclusion In this chapter, I explored the concept of liminality through empirical material collected in the commemorative celebrations of LGBT50. As part of my ethnographic research practice, I gathered in-depth reflections of eleven cultural actors in and visitors to the event. Through their input, I discuss how LGBT50 can be read as a liminal event experience and how such experiences contribute to gendered and sexual meanings celebrated in the context of the event. From a conceptual point of view, Turner’s (1969, 1974, 1982, 1987a, 1987b, 1989) liminality characterises through the temporality addressed as a ‘time out of time’ model. Additionally, these temporal structures introduce a subversive and transgressive potential, which is widely discussed for the analysis of transformational, political aspirations of festive events. I proved the relevance of the temporal and subversive structures of liminality in the LGBT50 celebrations through the empirical data. Beyond the basic, conceptual characterisation of liminality, I explored the personal, political, and imaginary experiences, which liminal moments enable. Following Browne (2007), I discussed how personal influences and collective aspirations shaped the event and analysed the importance of visibility as a political interest. Furthermore, I outlined imaginaries, which cultural actors envisioned and desired. Next to the affirmative analysis of liminal experiences in the LGBT50 celebration, the empirical accounts of research participants required me to critically discuss eventual limitations of the concept and its application in festive event settings. Observed by research participants and conceptualised by scholars such as Aching (2010), Kendall (2006), Pielichaty (2015), and Ravenscroft and Gilchrist (2009), subversion is a privilege. On the one side, the liminal experience is marked as a ‘time out of time’,

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which makes transgressions equal to exceptional phases outside the hegemonic norms. On the other side, conceptually but also empirically, exclusions of identities, whose transgressions are not limited to the permitted timeframes of celebrated liminality counter the LGBT-themed events’ aspirations, as these individuals and communities are further marginalised. Taking such critique of subversion into consideration, liminality serves as a strong concept for generating debate about LGBT-themed celebrations. However, the inherent power struggles cannot be disregarded, as disciplining practices and further marginalisation are taking place in the playful explorations of gender and sexuality. In light of increasing institutionalisation and ‘routinization’ (Thomassen, 2009, p. 22) of LGBT-themed celebrations, future research cannot be blind to the power dynamic and structural violence that shapes these celebratory occasions. Acknowledgements This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 675378. My gratitude goes to all research participants, who continuously support the investigation and challenge, reflect on and discuss the developments in and of their city with me. Additionally, I would like to thank Athena Maria Enderstein, Sarah Pennington and Jennifer Jones for their editing support.

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CHAPTER 6

Searching for Sites of Liminality in Giga-Events Seth I. Kirby and Michael B. Duignan

Introduction Giga-events, the archetype being the Summer Olympic Games, serve to shock respective cities and local territories—either blessed or cursed to play ‘host’. Indeed, during the planning and delivery phases, giga-events grip and take hold of urban spaces, whether that be infrastructural assets or geographies of community living. Here, we predominantly refer to the physical, telluric type of ‘shock’—and—the economic as they require significant and exponentially increasing public–private financing schemes in comparison to let’s say a mega or major event (Müller, 2015). The description ‘giga’ is a fairly new introduction into the large-scale sporting event literature, presented to illustrate the rising financial, time and energy costs, and the colossal impact(s) of mega-sport events. Albeit somewhat axiomatic, a host regions’ size, geographical location, social and cultural

S. I. Kirby (B) Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] M. B. Duignan Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_6

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influences, and overall urban make-up plays a critical role in influencing how the event takes form and impacts the city and its citizens. Policy and contractual bidding agreements are enacted in such a way to deploy wholesale, concentrated development projects adjoined to the hosting process. Indeed, the changes and the quotidian practices that occur and determine everyday living at the local host community level are significant and by and largely irreversible. Disruption, perhaps even creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1942) causes both temporary and permanent—often urban—change (Raco & Tunney, 2010). Within the melee of Olympic planning some vested interests are mobilised (Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, & Rothengatter, 2003), whilst others are rendered immobilised (Giulianotti, Armstrong, Hales, & Hobbs, 2015)—leading to inclusionary outcomes for some, and not for others. In this chapter we draw on a latent but burgeoning field of research that has conceptually and empirically positioned host communities, specifically micro and small businesses, as a marginalised stakeholder group— with neither the power nor influence during event planning and in amplifying positive leverageable business benefits (Armstrong, Giulianotti, & Hobbs, 2017; Clark, Kearns, & Cleland, 2016; Giulianotti et al., 2015; Kirby, Duignan, & McGillivray, 2018; Pappalepore & Duignan, 2016; Raco & Tunney, 2010; Vlachos, 2016). Yet, such large-scale projects are often argued on the grounds of local inclusion (House of Lords, 2013). We have come to a critical juncture in the life cycle and legitimisation of the Olympic movement—as noted by Zimbalist (2015). Never before have there been such accounts of international, national, and regional resistance, including reports by Around the Rings right through to GamesMonitor and Play the Game. On the ground efforts from locally based pressure and campaigning groups like ‘RioOnWatch’ and NOlympics LA have risen up magnifying the urban struggles that precede and follow the occurrence of investments in flagship urban development agendas and programmes (Lauermann, 2014). Beyond pressure groups, even large-scale funding bids have been commissioned to examine uneven development effects. For example, in 2018, Coventry University secured a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions grant entitled ‘EventRights’ to examine human rights issues within major sporting events (see EventRights, 2019). Similarly, to this chapter, it emphasises the differential between Olympic planning rhetoric of inclusion (that feature across host city candidature bid documents, like Rio 2016)—and—the realities

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of event exclusion for neighbouring host communities (Duignan, Pappalepore, & Everett, 2019). Although, O’Brien (2006) indicates that mega-sport events provide the ‘seed capital’ to be appropriately optimised by stakeholders themselves (whether that be at the macro level by policymakers, to smaller businesses and residents at the micro level), our introduction, reveals that not everyone has the ability and ‘right’ to access so-called event (business) benefits. Whereas some stakeholders have the permission to be included as beneficiaries, highly circumscribed environments created by the Olympic Games often preclude individual and collective rights to leverage (Chalip, 2018—also see Zizek, 2008 for a wider sociological debate between ‘permissions’ and ‘rights’). In order to sustain some of the positive social and economic outcomes of mega-sporting event culture and production (i.e. inspiring young social entrepreneurship—see IOC, 2018), we argue that ‘giga’—and indeed mega and major—sporting event organisers must rethink the (neoliberal) economic logic that presides over the strategic and operational models and governance of the Olympics. As a result, we explore and map out both the conceptual and practical ways giga-events, alongside other large-scale events like major events can be disrupted. With these issues in mind, we introduce and discuss the concept of ‘liminality’: a concept inherently disruptive, highly creative, and abstract in nature. A key aim of this chapter is to consider the different ways giga-events can foster sites of liminality to transform the marginalised and invisible, to an included and visible stakeholder group, and more specifically, ensure event visitor economy benefits are evenly distributed across host communities for both external, global interests—and—internal, local interests. This is achieved by drawing on a multitude of historical case studies linked to large-scale events like the Olympic Games, including major events right through to regional cultural and sporting festivals. Moreover, engagement with other sources combines official Olympic candidature, governing body policy, and independent event-related reports. The authors’ perspectives are also captured using their own observational data: audio and visual data collected as part of the RioZones (2016) project (approx. 2500 photos, and over 5 ½ hours of recording) which examined the conditions, processes, and spaces in and around official Host Event Zones (HEZs), Last Mile transit zones, and Live Site areas (see Cade, Everett, & Duignan, 2019; Duignan & McGillivray, 2019). This observational data was collected between 31 July and 8 August

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2016, and research conducted post-Games. Here, photographs and digital vlog recordings enabled the researchers to understand and reflect upon their first-hand experiences and observations (Pink, 2013). Structurally, we outline the theoretical framework and affordances of liminality; specifically, liminal thinking, liminal spaces, and the creation of liminoidal environments that engender communitas and the celebration of all things local. We then illustrate how such concepts can disrupt the flows and consumption patterns of Olympic visitor economies: a process we argue to be the shift from ‘neoliberal consumption’ to ‘critical consumption’. We then introduce a new, but highly applicable framework by Duignan, Everett, Walsh, and Cade (2018) dubbed the ‘Festival–Event– Leverage Complex’ (FELC) to illustrate how such event-led policies provide ideal physical and digital spaces for micro and small businesses to leverage. Our penultimate section proceeds to amalgamate our analysis of liminality, the need to shift consumption, and the affordances of the FELC—and extends the framework by overlaying the different types of liminal spaces identified in the context of large-scale events, like gigaevents. The conclusion presents a succinct conceptual and practical wrap of all key points and outlines a series of policy and managerial implications, followed by a call for future scholars and practitioners to embrace liminal thinking as a way of democratising event outcomes.

Liminality: Liminal Thinking, Liminal Spaces, and Creating the Liminoidal Environment Our earlier discussion provides a neat segue into how we applied the notion of liminality: the power of liminal thinking and the production of liminal spaces as a way to disrupt and (re)configure the manner in which mega-sport events are planned and delivered. We argue such thinking provides a unique opportunity for policymakers and managers to gain a new perspective on the way events can be (re)organised and (re)engineered in a system that produces a more equitable outcome for internal, incumbent—and—external, contingent stakeholders of such projects. Yet, liminality in conjunction with the context of large-scale sporting events like the Olympics has received little consideration and analysis, despite its usage in other event contexts (Chalip, 2006, 2014, 2018; O’Brien & Chalip, 2007). Neglected too is a particular focus on the conditions and processes that inhibit or foster liminality and communitas in a giga- and mega-sporting event situation (Chalip, 2018).

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Liminal thinking distinguishes a break from the instrumental rationality school of thought (see earlier work of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, namely Habermas) that most certainly guides the organisation of mega-sport events. Stemming directly from the field of anthropology (e.g. Turner, Harris, & Park, 1983; Ziakas & Boukas, 2013), it offers an abstract, but deeper explanatory framework to indicate why—and most importantly for this paper: how—mega-sport events can build inclusionary environments that balance a range of global and local interests. As such, this focus frames and fuels our search for the ‘how’: namely, the physical and digital sites where liminality may exist. This is critical for emphasising ways to secure micro and small business benefits and promote conditions for local forms of entrepreneurship to flourish. Yet, as noted by Giulianotti et al. (2015): ‘the system (organisation of mega-sport events) has notable negative effects on economic activity, specifically for local businesses’ (…) and that “local stakeholders indicate that at the everyday level major Olympic related economic opportunities tended to bypass politically marginalised social groups” (…) resulting in a ‘stark division between global and local economies’. (p. 131)

By examining the different ways mega-sporting events can be disrupted, attempts can be fashioned to transform negative effects to positive effects for local, micro, and smaller businesses, to visibilise this often-marginal social group, and bridge the divide between a project for a few—to a project for the many. Indeed, we recognise this thinking may come across as rather utopian, yet this is in line with Turner’s (1992) writing before the turn of the twenty-first century, where he suggests liminality is inherently, ‘plural, fragmentary and experimental’ (…) ‘subversive’ in nature (…) providing a ‘radical critique of central structures and proposes a utopian model’ (p. 57). In effect, the aim of this chapter is to consider the practices events may be increasing democratised, where host cities may reflect and celebrate multidimensional conceptions (Healey, 2002), mobilise and invite marginal communities, like micro and small businesses to the Olympic party. Daring to dream and to be disruptive reflects our positionality: an alignment with Turner’s optimistic take on (re)configuring and transforming social, economic, and organisational processes.

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Going one step further, what we do know about Turner’s liminal thinking, is the power of coming together and of collective celebration to subvert naturalised social and economic practice in society i.e. practices that marginalise, that exclude—like those described in the context of the Olympic Games (O’Brien & Chalip, 2007; Turner, 1992). Indeed, event activity heightens a community’s sense of place as argued by Cresswell (2014), perhaps even sacred yet usually existing within secular environments (O’Brien & Chalip, 2007; Ziakas & Boukas, 2013). Liminal practices in events can be viewed as a way of creating memorable and meaningful visitor experiences through experiential elements and animation of, let’s say, a host community (Voase, 2018). Here, a ‘feel good’ factor and the celebratory atmosphere is created and maintained across the life cycle of the project, a sort-of social camaraderie (Balduck, Maes, & Buelens, 2011). These key dimensions that foster liminality, liminoidal, and ‘communitas’ (Chalip, 2006) have been applied theoretically and sector-specific across both leisure studies and cultural policy (Thomassen, 2014). Communitas refers to a sense of belonging—and of connectedness to, with and among a community—helping to create relationships between the host city, citizens, entrepreneurs, and the event itself (Chalip, 2018). Turner (1969, 1979) emphasises the symbiotic relationship between the liminal, liminoidal, and communitas, and as formulated later in this chapter, the notion of rituals enabling these events to traverse or even penetrate the conditions for positive outcomes attached to certain social groups (i.e. in our case, micro and small businesses). Here, such concepts, when juxtaposed against the social and economic dilemmas of local marginalisation, help to open up new lines of rhizomatic thinking (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), a mode of creative resistance central for potentially transforming the fortunes of those on the margins of giga-event planning and delivery. Turner (1979) defined three different, sequential forms of communitas: (i) spontaneous, (ii) ideological, and (iii) normative, defined as: Spontaneous: types of interactions and experiences engendered temporally. For example, during the course of a giga-event life cycle like the ‘pre-event’ (i.e. bidding, planning, preparation), ‘live staging’ (i.e. execution), and ‘post-event’ phase (i.e. closure and handover); Ideological: concepts which describe the interactions of spontaneous communitas. This can be linked to policy drivers, political involvement, and relationships between key stakeholders in the host city or region;

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Normative: a group hoping to derive and retain lasting spontaneous communitas and relationships, such as the local organising committee or authority. Extending Turner’s earlier work Thomassen (2009) demarcated three different types of liminal experiences; Subject: associated with three types of subject—single individuals (e.g. local organising committee members), social groups (e.g. community organisations), and whole societies (e.g. city citizens and the wider national population); Space: spatial aspects of liminality leading to the emergence of liminal experiences connected to geographical and/or specific zones. Turner (1984, p. 21) refers to this as ‘rituals of the second type’ in public places like city squares (i.e. the multitude of official event spaces, like venues, Last Mile and Live Site areas across the host city and HEZs); and Time: temporal dimensions of liminality interspersed by moments: short-term, longer-term, and epochs. In this case, various project deliverables (i.e. the planning of the Cultural Olympiad programme 4 years prior to the Games), the immediate live staging phase, through to the post-Games legacy intergenerational city or regional effects. It is within these liminal and liminoidal conditions that a sort-of ‘social limbo’ may be fostered with the force to reconfigure social, economic, power, and spatial relations (Thomassen, 2014)—as described earlier as a key justification for this conceptual frame. Here, rather paradoxically, events can be seen as both simultaneously producing and resisting modes of domination, whilst offering an opportunity to subvert naturalised hierarchy and dominant values that we have come to expect of neoliberal environments (Getz, 2005). As noted earlier, we purposively focus on the power of events—as liminal spaces—to promote non-dominant values in less rigid, highly circumscribed, and prescriptive spaces (Caudwell & Rinehart, 2014). Spaces free from the forces that determine action, offering freedom from the ties that control behaviour and typify the mundanity of everyday life (Shields, 1990), this complemented by the modification and transformation of existing behaviours that promote non-traditional behaviour (Robinson, 2006).

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Disrupting ‘Corporate Kettling’: ‘Neoliberal Consumption’ to ‘Critical Consumption’ Let’s take this one step further. What we are really talking about, beyond the abstractions, are the rather real issues around where event visitor economies spend and consume. When we talk about the marginalisation of host communities, specifically micro and small businesses and local forms of entrepreneurship in the case of this chapter, we mean the specific ways flows and circulations of people—both residents, regular visitors, and event tourists—are reconfigured to spend in non-local spaces (McGillivray & Frew, 2015). By non-local spaces, we are concerned with diverting both the visitor gaze (Urry, 2002) and consumption towards official HEZs lined with official sponsors, supporters, and suppliers. Unquestionably, the commodity of urban space, place, and even other cultural attractions like renowned beaches (i.e. Copacabana, for Rio 2016 Olympic Games) and UNESCO World Heritage sites (i.e. Greenwich, for London 2012 Olympic Games) are transformed into sites of official sports, cultural, and commercial activity—a costly endeavour (Müller, 2015). Giga-events not only take over central, touristic urban spaces but also dramatically impact residential neighbourhoods. Albeit temporarily, they reshape and disrupt the social, economic, and spatial relations between stakeholders at both the national, regional, and community level. Numerous authors, including Osborn and Smith (2016) describe commoditised and corporate urban spaces as ‘brandscapes’—where targeted urban spaces are dressed in the 5 Olympic rings regalia and littered with multinational global organisations and chains that pay for the ‘right’ to be there (McGillivray & Frew, 2015). According to McGillivray and Frew, in the context of London 2012, the city was, ‘kneeling at the altar of the Olympic brand’ (2015, p. 2658). Giulianotti et al.’s (2015) analysis go one step further, exemplifying how transit spaces are subject to ‘corporate kettling’, detailing how routes to venues are crafted to maximise corporate spending. They note how for London, visitors were corralled through ‘Westfield’ shopping centre to and from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, situated in Stratford, Newham—away from the old town centre: home to non-official, local interests (Armstrong et al., 2017). Often, this occurred across other geographies: Central Greenwich (Vlachos, 2016), Hackney (Pappalepore & Duignan, 2016)—a challenge regularly featured by national and regional media outlets (e.g. Financial Times, 2012) and UK Government policy analysis too (e.g. Federation of Small

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Businesses, 2013; London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 2012). However, the (re)diversion of visitor economies towards official sites of corporate consumption may well result in what is denoted as ‘economic leakage’ (Mills & Rosentraub, 2013). Effectively, economic leakage refers to the process whereby money spent—quite literally—leaks out of the local economy and is not circulated in the locality and/or region. For example, this occurs when consumers opt to spend in global chains over local independent businesses. This is a particular challenge in the era of credit and the digitised economy, as revenue streams are directed towards centralised banking systems at international headquarters (i.e. Lausanne, Switzerland—headquarters of the International Olympic Committee, IOC), as opposed to being retained in the pockets of local people (Duignan et al., 2018). As a result, the economic benefits of consumption are diluted or lost: a frequent concern in the context of large-scale events (Osborn & Smith, 2016), primarily mega-sporting events (Armstrong et al., 2017; Vlachos, 2016). Chalip (2004) argues that in order to secure positive event-related benefits (direct, indirect, and induced) for the host community, spectator consumption must remain and spread within the locality.

Mapping Sites of Liminality and Extending the ‘Festival--Event--Leverage Complex’ In search for sites of liminality, researchers may play close attention to networked relationships between stakeholders within the setting of large-scale events (Duignan et al., 2018; Peachey, Borland, Lobpries, & Cohen, 2015). Ziakas (2016) notes that event managers are to proactively structure and organise space in a way that fosters connectedness integral to the character and nature of liminal and liminoidal spaces. As well as, the non-traditional behaviour enhanced within these spaces (Yarnal & Kerstetter, 2005). Chalip’s (2006) work, initially laid the foundation for considering the liminal in an event setting, as we wish to extend in this chapter. He suggested incorporating strategies like creating event-related social events to enable visitor social interactions, ‘event theming’ and the development of ‘ancillary events’—with the hope of generating interest and consumption within, for example, marginalised communities. Girginov (2017) further emphasises that liminality may be fostered through strategic (leveraging) linkages between, for example, community initiatives and institutional rules and conventions. Here, an alignment

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between the objectives of the host community, the hosting city (at government and local authority level), and event itself emerged key (Ziakas & Boukas, 2013), alongside this, simultaneously planned social interactions between visitors and communities may well result in contemporary social and economic challenges being more openly debated (Ziakas, 2016). For example, Duignan and McGillivray (2016) noted that communities across so-called transit routes and close to event venues in Rio for the 2016 Games, opted to enliven residential communities through Brazilian culture: samba music, dancing, and a slow food offer—a means to encourage visitors to ‘dwell’ and connect with local communities as opposed to solely with official sites of corporate consumption. As a consequence of our analysis, we build on a new theoretical framework devised by Duignan et al. (2018) called the ‘Festival–Event–Leverage Complex’ (see Fig. 6.1). We extend the model by overlaying sites of liminality, to illustrate the complex physical and digital ways marginalised social groups (i.e. host communities, principally micro and small businesses) can visibilise themselves and/or engage in productive forms of ‘immediate leveraging’ in the context of giga-events. In many ways, these identified sites also apply to other event environments (e.g. mega and Event production and liminoid spaces.

Physical and digital connection

Giga-event Exploitation of the liminal spaces by microentrepreneurs

Activation of events as a series of ‘leverageable’ resources

The presence of these connections can be extended to enhance micro and small business resources and capabilities.

Overcoming ‘core’ vs ‘peripheral’ locality and stimulating small biz movements and outcomes across giga-event spaces.

Micro and small businesses

‘Event leverage’ Organisational activities, barriers (e.g. access) or producer ‘resistance’.

Fig. 6.1 Extended Festival–Event–Leverage Complex (Adapted from Duignan et al., 2018)

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major events and other regional cultural and sporting events) that initially inspired Duignan et al. (2018) to develop the Festival–Event–Leverage Complex (FELC). Essentially, sites of liminality identified represent potential spaces of disruption that can help promote a shift from ‘neoliberal consumption’ to ‘critical consumption’ during the live staging periods between the Olympic Games Opening and Closing Ceremony. Practices outlined can be considered by marginalised social groups themselves, and/or those responsible for constructing event environments and spaces required to stage official sporting, cultural, and commercial activity. For those wishing to create socio-economically inclusive events, particularly micro and small businesses wishing to leverage visitor economies, we implore a range of stakeholders to integrate liminal space into the planning, design, and creation of all kinds of events, top-down (i.e. megasport events) through to bottom-up, grassroots initiatives (e.g. local, regional cultural, and sporting festivals). From National Organising Committee’s (NOCs) to delivery organisations, right through to local community groups, we encourage the development of co-created and co-curated Olympic spaces that celebrate and animate those at the local level to stimulate ‘communitas’ indicative of liminoidal spaces (O’Brien & Chalip, 2007).

Physical and Digital (Giga)Liminalscapes During the live staging period, host city venues and zones can be assembled to afford micro and small businesses to access the event and overcome marginalisation. Practical digital and physical recommendations have been formulated to transfer greater levels of connectivity between the visitor economy and the local host community. This corresponds to how giga-event spaces are designed to foster connected, liminal spaces, and local service delivery. Urban host public spaces prioritised to house ephemeral and enduring event-related infrastructure developments have the propensity to enter and engender different states of liminality, types of liminal experience, and forms of communitas (Thomassen, 2009; Turner, 1979). These temporary and permanent states of liminality function in various HEZs and other prominent spaces more commonly found outside of ‘official’ Games areas. For example, public and visitor zones like assigned Live Sites or Fan Fests. Accessible design of spaces can infuse local individuality and offer a more balanced consumption in the area. The planning of event venues and fan zones dispersed across the city

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alter consumption patterns in and around public spaces and contribute to opportunities such as short-term enterprise and promotional activities. At Rio 2016, organisers envisaged that the host city’s ‘Live Sites’ could act as platforms to support wider objectives including activating landmarks (e.g. Museum of Tomorrow), strengthening the planning of urban sites (such as Porto Maravilha), and enhancing festivity and spectator experiences (Rio 2016, 2009a). Significant factors can influence the success of inner-city event spaces and venues, such as location choice for event spaces, careful placement of fan zones, and selecting sites with sufficient land for employing and assembling temporary venues (ARUP, 2017; Gold & Gold, 2018). Temporary and moveable facilities and the conversion of key central buildings may aid micro and small business activity in urban city spaces. This is beneficial for stimulating the likes of food and drink stalls, pop-ups, and permanent establishments (e.g. bars and restaurants), as well as transitioning spatial changes and local trading levels from preGames, live staging to post-Games. Host city value can be derived by employing local community associations and small businesses to deliver services in HEZ’s and ancillary event spaces. Micro and small traders are often unable to access local entrepreneurial opportunities at the expense of larger corporations. Furthermore, these traders may be unlikely to respond to demand, achieve more favourable sales and enhance their brand presence, compared to sponsors and international event partners. In order to realise potential gains, local organisations, and small businesses need to possess the knowledge and skill set to sufficiently prepare for the event. Better cohesion between local groups and specific stakeholders (e.g. key state actors and the local organising committee) may help in imparting collective knowledge and expertise. This context-specific knowledge is valuable in enabling the enhancement of outcomes for an eclectic range of event stakeholders (Hede, 2007). A critical component for generating stronger impetus and benefits to smaller organisations relates to facilitating action at an intercity level. Public authorities could offer incentives and access to local business support programmes, provide support and assist in developing supply-chain partnerships, and elicit advice from trade and other business organisations e.g. small business associations, trade associations, and regional tourism boards. Activities driven from host community organisations and groups can be enacted to prolong long-term integrative event leveraging strategies, as opposed to piecemeal solutions engineered by the local organising committee. The presence of these

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networks and physical connections is then extended to enhance micro and small business resources, capabilities and foster spontaneous communitas (Turner, 1979). In the construction and production of Live Sites and key attractions, enforcing relaxed legislatorial powers for micro and small businesses and opening-up public and green spaces to and from event venues encourages demand for local trade. This can be explicitly accomplished by earmarking walkways connecting key city infrastructure (e.g. transportation, accommodation) leading to event venues, often known as ‘Last Mile’ spaces e.g. at London 2012 (Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, 2012). In the run-up to Rio 2016, reforms were enacted to increase the investment in transport networks and routes such as the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Light Rail Vehicle (VLT), predominantly directed towards areas like Gamboa and Santo Cristo in the central district (incorporating transit arrangements such as the disputed and no longer operational Providência cable car), to the Santos Dumont terminal situated near Guanabara Bay—the Bay (specifically Marina da Glória formed part of the Flamengo Park cluster) was deployed as the primary sailing venue at Rio 2016 (Carvalho, Cavalcanti, & Venuturupalli, 2016; CDURP, 2016; Rio 2016, 2009a; Zimbalist, 2017). Although, interventions failed to solidify local services and integrate disparate key Olympic venues and facilities. To illustrate this, both locals and visitors struggled to move quickly and efficiently between sites located across the city. For example, Porto Maravilha (and Olympic Boulevard), a Live Site in the central area, Deodoro Park in the North Zone, Barra Olympic Park in the West Zone, Flamengo Park, and Lagoa Stadium—adjacent to Copacabana (South Zone) and home to the rowing and canoeing competitions and international broadcasters during the Games (Carvalho et al., 2016; IOC, 2016; Rio 2016, 2009a). As such, urban locations are largely dependent on giga-event planning and organisation which underpin these spaces. To capitalise on the co-creation of spaces and visitor flows, HEZ’s organisers could take advantage of digital and online technology as an emerging resource. Innovations in smart and cloud-enabled devices and tools unlock the possibilities of users to co-curate the role and format of these live event spaces. Digital and virtual technological platforms (e.g. augmented reality) have the potential to facilitate liminal space and enhance the liminal event experiences for visitors and attendees (Robertson, Yeoman, Smith, & McMahon-Beattie, 2015). As part of event hosting, digital communication upgrades can enable freer participation from micro and small businesses directly linked to these interactions. Technology

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development and tapping into deeper levels of physical engagement between locals and visitors were stipulated to be at the core of Rio 2016’s host city plans. Rio 2016 was the first Olympic Games to adopt virtual reality technology (ARUP, 2017). The organisers of the Games (Rio 2016, 2009b) expressed their intentions for supporting connectivity and peak, digital engagement in competition venues, and Live Sites. At Casa Brasil, a Porto Maravilha installation, state-of-the-art audio-visual technology and interactive spaces were integrated and exhibited for cultural events, seminars, and workshops (Rede Nacional do Esporte, 2016). Digital improvements (e.g. an interactive port guide) and smart-based solutions in partnership with Cisco housed at the base of Porto Maravilha included an Urban Innovation Challenge and a connected urban platform unveiled in July 2016 (Carino & Dantas, 2017; Uchoa & Barros, 2017). Growth and opportunities arise from coordinating ‘Live Site’ immersive environments designed to increase spectator participation and visitor experiences, from the likes of virtual reality and handheld devices (ARUP, 2017). Inaccessible host urban centres could be reprogrammed and initiated using digital platforms (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) to provide digital clues to harvest ‘liminoid spaces’ for local traders to engage consumers in critical consumption (Duignan et al., 2018). This attempts to divert and overcome the ‘core’ traditional business, in exchange for the cultivation of active digital engagement. Hence, recompensating demand to the peripheral locality to heighten micro and small business interactions, and desirable host community outcomes across giga-event spaces.

Conclusions In summary, our analysis indicates an array of liminal space attributes and addresses a gap in knowledge examining the theoretical and applied works of liminality in the emerging giga-events research domain. Conceptually, the chapter contributes to the types of liminal experiences that can occur in these contexts, principally the spatial and temporal dimensions of liminality (Thomassen, 2009). Although there has been a convergence between liminality and giga-event research, the conceptual tenets are not well understood, and practically speaking, there is scant evidence to illustrate how liminal spaces can be effectively reimagined for host community benefit in the long term. From an event organiser and policy perspective, salient recommendations proposed could be useful for organising event

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spaces, as well as securing greater participation and creating tangible economic returns for micro and small businesses. This is vital in an era of uncertainty and growing concerns tied to how global bodies such as the IOC achieve divergent multiple event stakeholder objectives. Using past Olympic Games hosts (e.g. Rio 2016), prevalent issues concerning how to craft physical, spatial, and digital liminal spaces have been explored. Areas of enquiry relate to how liminality can assist in explaining live staging HEZs. This includes the significance of urban host city Live Site spaces and ancillary facilities, and how venues can be actively managed, incorporating micro and small businesses to help disrupt spending and marginalisation. To amplify and synergise embryonic liminality we extended the ‘Festival–Event–Leverage Complex’ to demonstrate how it is possible to leverage liminal spaces for host community benefit. Digital and physical steps establish a vision for how giga-event spaces can be realised to better coalesce with elements of liminality. In addition, our best practice examples and tactics endeavour to illustrate the interplay between prominent Live Sites and liminal experiences for locals and tourists alike. The authors instigate a call for empirically driven event liminality research, not only geared towards other giga-events but also aligned to smaller-scale event categories (e.g. major sporting events), focusing on spectator interactions and small business experiences. Future research is posited to assess the short- and medium-term sporting event Live Sites—from HEZ location selection, design, implementation to conversion and/or removal, combined with longer-term assessments of spatial and temporal changes in event hosting territories. Acknowledgement This work was supported by 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [Research and Innovation grant agreement no. 823815].

References Armstrong, G., Giulianotti, R., & Hobbs, D. (2017). Policing the London 2012 Olympics. London: Routledge. ARUP. (2017). Cities Alive: Rethinking legacy for host cities. Retrieved from https://www.arup.com/-/media/arup/files/publications/c/ 170407hclegacy-a5-v6.pdf. Balduck, A.-L., Maes, M., & Buelens, M. (2011). The social impact of the Tour de France: Comparisons of residents’ pre- and post-event perceptions. European Sport Management Quarterly, 11(2), 91–113.

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CHAPTER 7

From Everyday Life into the Liminoid and Back Again Transportation Processes in the Case of the World Gymnastics for All Event, the Gymnaestrada

Angela Wichmann

Introduction Every four years, more than 20,000 gymnasts from all over the world leave their ordinary life at home and come together in a specific place to celebrate the diversity of gymnastics at the World Gymnaestrada. They enjoy a liminoid experience constituted by the shared joy and love of doing collective gymnastics before returning back home to their everyday life. It is these processes of transition this chapter is dedicated to. Informed by the work of Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, and other scholars in the field, the chapter investigates how participants in the purely non-competitive, official Gymnastics for All world event, the World Gymnaestrada, perceive and experience the transportation process from their ordinary life into the liminoid setting as well as back again.

A. Wichmann (B) Hochschule Fresenius University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_7

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The World Gymnaestrada is the official, worldwide event of Gymnastics for All. Taking place since 1953, the event promotes and celebrates the diversity of gymnastics in a purely non-competitive environment. Participation is open to everybody, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, class background, nationality, and skill level (Schwirtz, 2006). Its one-week program consists exclusively of group displays, performed by between ten and two hundred gymnasts across several indoor and outdoor stages in the respective host destination. The displays cover all forms of gymnastics, such as artistic, rhythmic and aesthetic gymnastics, acrobatics, trampoline, and aerobics. Based on the peaceful, inclusive Gymnastics for All philosophy, four ‘Fs’ summarise the philosophy of the World Gymnaestrada: fun, fitness, fundamentals, and friendship (Mechbach & Lundquist Waneberg, 2011; Schwirtz, 2006). The World Gymnaestrada aims at building bridges and fostering understanding between people. The collective displays of all forms of gymnastics are a means to build bridges between the different facets of gymnastics as well as between the gymnasts themselves. The Gymnaestrada appears as an insightful and promising setting to explore liminality as the Gymnastics for All philosophy evokes an analogy to Turner’s (1969) notion of communitas. Communitas is a particular form of community felt by people who experience liminality together (Turner, 1969). It denotes a community characterised by the erosion of social distinction and barriers, a deep sense of equality and cohesion, solidarity and community spirit, hence matching and being in line with above-mentioned characteristics of the Gymnaestrada philosophy. The research for this chapter was part of a larger project that investigated the meanings non-elite gymnasts attach to their participation in the World Gymnaestrada. Based on an ethnographic research approach and taking a specific group of female German gymnasts as a particular case study, the chapter draws on rich qualitative data that were mainly collected in the context of the 2011 World Gymnaestrada in Lausanne, Switzerland. Further data were added four years later at the 2015 Gymnaestrada in Helsinki, Finland. During both data collection periods, participant observation as a key method was combined with semi-structured interviews and document analysis. After outlining the related key concepts, rather than addressing the event as such, the chapter investigates the participants’ experiences of the separation phase from home, the liminoid time on site as well as their returning home. The chapter argues that the awareness of the liminoid nature of the event with its pre- and post-liminoid stage accompanies the

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way the event is perceived and experienced. In doing so, the chapter contributes to advance our understanding of the extent to which the notion of liminality provides insight into the way an international, recurring sports event is experienced.

Liminality, Transportation, and the World Gymnaestrada The process of leaving the familiar environment, experiencing the Gymnaestrada, and returning home can be interpreted against the backdrop of Van Gennep’s (2005) rites of passage, denoting a ritual that marks ‘every change of place, state, social position and age’ (Turner, 1969, p. 94). Rites of passage facilitate transformations of status or position of individuals within society and, thereby, ensure the continuity of a community (Turner, 1969, 1982). Turner (1969) refers to Van Gennep (2005) to demonstrate that wherever and whenever people pass from one life stage to another, this involves three phases: separation, transition, and incorporation. In the first phase, people are separated from their previous status or position. The second period relates to the transitional stage, called limen or threshold, where one has left the original state, but not yet reached the new one. In the third stage, then, people are reincorporated, having assumed a new status (Van Gennep, 2005). For Turner (1969), the transition or liminal period is of particular relevance: Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial. (p. 95)

While Turner (1982) originally investigated ritual processes in traditional cultures, he suggested that in modern societies, activities such as sports, events, arts, and entertainment take over the functions of rituals. While, for him, the term liminal referred to pre-industrial social forms of living, he used the notion liminoid to ‘describe ritual-like types of symbolic action that occurred in leisure activities’ (Schechner, 2006, p. 67) in modern and postmodern societies. No matter whether a traditional or post-industrial social order is concerned, it is in the transition period in which the communitas phenomenon develops, characterised by equality, solidarity, and comradeship (Turner, 1969, 1982).

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The considerations in this chapter provide support for the three-stage process in the context of a sports event. The Gymnaestrada participants abandon their familiar environment, experience a liminoid period of communitas, ‘a time and space of withdrawal from normal modes of social action’ (Turner, 1969, p. 167), before they return to everyday life. Turner (1982) suggests this process of experiencing liminality may be accompanied by a shift in space and time. More specifically, for him, ‘[t]he passage from one social status to another is often accompanied by a parallel passage in space, a geographical movement from one place to another’ (Turner, 1982, p. 25). In his analysis of the uses and meanings of liminality, Thomassen (2009, p. 16) builds upon these considerations, arguing that ‘liminality is applicable to both space and time’. According to him, liminality can involve both moments and longer periods or epochs. Regarding the spatial dimension, Thomassen (2009) differentiates between specific places, more extended areas, and whole countries. In line with other investigations of liminality in liminoid settings, such as the studies on liminality in dance events (Jaimangal-Jones, Pritchard, & Morgan, 2010), package tourism to Mallorca (Andrews, 2006, 2009) and mosh pits (Riches, 2011), ‘[t]he temporary staging of […] events also contributes to their construction as liminal spaces and experiences as they are not permanent’ (Jaimangal-Jones et al., 2010, p. 254). These liminoid settings share that ‘[t]hey are not cyclical, but continuously generated, though in the times and places apart from work settings assigned to “leisure” activities’ (Turner, 1982, p. 54). The particular setting, hence, involves that the experience of the occurrences on site happens against fixed boundaries of space and time. Likewise, the context of the World Gymnaestrada investigation is constituted by these features, reflecting the nature of an event, which is characterised in part by its limited duration with a clear starting point and end (Getz, 1991). What needs to be critically reflected on, however, is to what extent the participants adopt a new status or position upon their returning home. Turner (1969) differentiated two key types of liminality, one that occurs in rituals of status elevation and one that happens in rituals of status reversal. In the case of the former, as a result of the ritual, the concerned individuals move from a lower position to a higher one. In the case of the latter, groups of people who usually have a low status in a social system are encouraged ‘to exercise ritual authority over their social superiors;

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and they, in their return must accept with good will their ritual degradation’ (Turner, 1969, p. 167). As the chapter will illustrate, at the Gymnaestrada, the participants neither move to a higher nor alternative new status, nor do they exercise power over their superiors. Instead, when they enter the incorporation stage of the rites of passage and leave the liminoid experience, it is the joy and joviality of the event and an enhanced group spirit and cohesion which extend into their daily life. In this context, it is crucial to consider one of the central differences between traditional and postmodern rituals in sports or leisure settings, drawing on the differentiation between transformation and transportation processes (Schechner, 1985, 2006). Schechner (1985, p. 125) calls ‘performances where performers are changed “transformations” and those where performers are returned to their starting places “transportations”’. While liminal rituals lead to transformations and result in permanent changes, in a liminoid setting, such as a sports event in the case of this research, or music events (Jaimangal-Jones et al., 2010; Riches, 2011) or a package tour (Andrews, 2006, 2009), people experience temporary modifications, while being transported out of, and back to, ordinary life. In the liminoid, people are transported to a different state of mind. They are enabled to do things they usually cannot do in everyday life. Once the liminoid stage is over, they return to everyday life unchanged (Schechner, 2006). Utilising terms from the world of theatre, also applicable in sports settings, Schechner (1985) suggests the ways into the liminoid are shaped by warm-up processes, while the ways out of the liminoid are constituted by so-called cool-down procedures. ‘If warm-ups prepare people for the leap into the performance, cooldown ushers them back to daily life’. (Schechner, 2006, p. 245). It is how participants in the World Gymnaestrada shape, perceive, and experience the warm up, the liminoid on site and the cool down upon their return to everyday life, which will be closely examined in what follows.

Warming Up: Letting Ordinary Life Go It was a sunny summer Saturday, when eleven gymnasts from a little town close to a big lake in South West Germany left their homes for an amazing week at the World Gymnaestrada in Lausanne. The transportation process out of the gymnasts’ everyday life was initiated. The group made the first part of the trip by ferry and then continued to Lausanne by train. Once, after having said goodbye to their families and friends at

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the ferry terminal, the boat put out to the lake, one gymnast took a deep breath and said, while smiling and blinking her eyes, ‘Wow, now we are rid of them’. The group answered with broad laughter. Immediately, the process of saying farewell to their relatives served as a bridge for recalling memories of earlier events of this kind: Oh, my dear, when we went to the Gymnaestrada 20 years ago, my kids were of the same age as your grandchildren now, who just said goodbye to us. You are right. We went by ferry as well to Zurich [to the Gymnaestrada in 1982]. It seems as though this happened yesterday. (Conversation)

Remembering shared experiences made the group look forward even more to the event, now finally about to begin. These occurrences may reflect Turner’s (1986) idea that it ‘is only when we bring into relation with the preoccupying present experience the cumulative results of similar or at least relevant, if not dissimilar, past experiences of similar potency, that the kind of relational structure we call “meaning” emerges’ (Turner, 1986, p. 36). In those first minutes of the trip, the women talked a lot about how they had prepared some guidance for their relatives for their everyday life, which, for those staying at home, would continue as usual. ‘I prepared them check lists’, ‘I precooked food’, and ‘I wrote an overview of my kids’ appointments for the week’ were typically heard comments. Talking about the ‘survival strategies’ for those at home, flew into, and intermingled with, stories about the process of packing their suitcases and bags: Packing took me two hours yesterday, I didn’t manage to get all my stuff into my bag. I packed and unpacked everything four times, it got easier and easier and, in the end, everything was in my bag, including my air mattress and sleeping bag. I thought, great, everything is inside, and then I saw my mattress was still lying around. Damn, I had to start all over again. (Conversation)

Through their stories about earlier shared experiences, about those remaining at home and about the process of packing, the group members appeared to detach themselves from their everyday life. But the very act of travelling to Lausanne did not only serve as a way of going away

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from home, but it also underlined the joy and thrill of anticipation in relation to the finally approaching experience of the Gymnaestrada as a group. To speak in the words of one gymnast, ‘it is so nice that we are finally on the road again, the group of us’. These findings support Fairley (2009, p. 219), who suggested the mode of transport, the bus in her case, ‘contributes to the sense of isolation from the outside world and acts as a physical boundary to delineate how the group is defined’. Also, the findings match the argument brought forward by Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2010) that; [A]lthough the travel itself can sometimes be arduous, the […] participants thought it worth the time and energy and considered it at times to be exciting as they eagerly anticipated the new experiences awaiting them at the venue. Thus, a journey can heighten the enjoyment of a[n] […] event as it increases the build-up and excitement; indeed, often the greater the commitment and effort required reaching an event, the more it was anticipated and enjoyed.’ (p. 257)

It seemed like in the warming-up period, the gymnasts’ everyday life was initially still present in their minds and stories. Preparing and talking about ‘survival strategies’ for those staying at home as well as recalling experiences about packing suitcases and bags can be interpreted to serve as a bridge between the gymnasts’ ordinary life and the event experience now finally about to start. In addition, telling stories about earlier shared event experiences shaped the process of going away from home. Step by step, the gymnasts were able to release everyday life; with each kilometre the distance away from home was growing, the gymnasts’ anticipation, joy, and thrill of finally going to the World Gymnaestrada became stronger and stronger. As Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2010, p. 262) suggest, the journey away from home helps the participants ‘to achieve the appropriate mental state for immersing [themselves] as fully as possible into the event’.

The Liminoid Stage: Being Nothing but a Gymnaestrada Participant As soon as the group arrived, the event occurrences on site captured the gymnasts’ minds and imagination. After the opening ceremony, the final rehearsals for the group displays on site as well as the dates related to their performances were prominent in the participants’ event schedule.

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Although this chapter is not primarily dedicated to these event occurrences as such, at least a couple of impressions, in what follows, aim at giving an overall idea of what the liminoid at the World Gymnaestrada is all about. The researched gymnasts took part in the German large group performance. Large group performances are presented open air in a stadium by at least 200 gymnasts, with each group usually presenting their show twice. Under the title and guiding theme ‘Cut your own path’, 500 gymnasts from all regions of Germany presented a 30-minute choreography consisting of five parts involving a modern dance choreography performed by 100 female dancers, followed by an energetic piece of dance aerobic presented by both male and female gymnasts. A group of 100 older people then took to the stage, performing a display with hand apparatus, succeeded by a group of younger gymnasts whose performance was dominated by high-level parkour, free-running, and tricking elements. The programme was rounded off by a big finale with all 500 participants. The purpose of the show was to present the diversity of gymnastics practiced within the German Gymnastics Federation. The event days were fully packed with these happenings, the rehearsals for the show on site, the performance dates as well as with watching the displays of other gymnastics groups and nationalities. Being actively engaged in these occurrences meant there was no time to think about life at home. While the gymnasts’ home environment still appeared to be prominently present on the trip to Lausanne, the first couple of days, on site, aspects of everyday life, such as job and family, were strikingly faded out for the most part. The rich experiences and occurrences on site kept the gymnasts busy, yet with a notable exception. There was one incident in which the gymnasts conspicuously integrated their life at home into their Gymnaestrada experience on site, namely on the occasion of celebrating one gymnast becoming a grandmother. The news that her daughter had given birth to a girl caused the group to throw a special party that night. Yet apart from this occurrence, the participants seemed to be in Lausanne and only in Lausanne. As one gymnast expressed it: ‘In Lausanne, I faded out my everyday life at home, I was just in Lausanne, Lausanne was just Lausanne, and there I am, for the moment, that’s my life’. In line with Andrews (2006, 2009), the participants experienced a particular notion of freedom in a context where the rules of everyday life are temporarily suspended. Jackson (1996) provides valuable insight

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into this phenomenon as well as its meaning and relevance. He suggests ‘[a]ny theory of culture, habitus or lifeworld must include some account of those moments in social life when the customary, given, habitual, and normal is disrupted, flouted, suspended, and negated’ (Jackson, 1996, p. 22). Riches (2011) refers to Turner’s (1969, 1982) conceptualisation of this particular state as ‘anti-structure’, denoting it as a ‘ritually organized time out from the rules and regulations of everyday life’ (Riches, 2011, p. 322). Also, the findings are in line with Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2010) who suggested ‘events are places that exist within yet outside existing social structures, where alternative norms and values hold sway and everyday identities become largely invisible in the eyes of others’ (p. 255). Yet, what makes this experience of the liminoid particular is that it is restricted to the space the participants temporarily inhabit, cut-off from the local population. While, within the Gymnaestrada collective, boundaries are gradually transcended, this process happens against fixed confines of space and time. It is in the face of the other, the outside world in Lausanne, that the community is symbolically constructed (Cohen, 1985). This is revealed in the observation of one gymnast she mentioned to me one morning while showing me a picture she took the day before. The photograph featured an elderly man, sitting on a bench at a bus stop, while smoking, buried in thought and self-engrossed, his appearance suggesting he was not involved in the Gymnaestrada: Look at the picture. When I saw this guy with his cigarette sitting there at the bus stop, I thought, gosh, and only two kilometres away from here, the normal everyday life of the people with all their problems goes on, and we are here in a completely different world. (Conversation)

The gymnast realises the way she perceives and experiences Lausanne is different from the way the man in her picture does. Through her particular lens as a Gymnaestrada participant she feels there is a boundary that sets her apart from the population of the city. Her accreditation card is a symbol of distinction, which makes her see and experience things to which the man at the bus stop does not have access to, even if he is located in one and the same place. What is different is that the gymnast is outside everyday life, while the man is in the thick of it. Drawing on the ideas of Turner (1969, 1982) and in line with previous sports tourism studies (Fairley, 2009; Gillett & Kelly, 2006; Rickly-Boyd, 2012; Shipway

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& Jones, 2008), it is being in a different place which accompanies the process of communitas formation and experiencing liminality.

Preparing for the End of the Liminoid Stage: Letting Ordinary Life in ‘And next week everything is over’. This comment, made by a gymnast towards the middle of the week in Lausanne, expresses her awareness of the temporary nature of the Gymnaestrada experience. Another gymnast’s statement, ‘At home life continues. My everyday life happens again only next week’, echoes this. Yet, in what she says, an additional aspect arises, namely her being mindful of the preliminary boundary between her current involvement in the occurrences on site in Lausanne and her life at home. Both gymnasts were aware of the clearly defined end of the Gymnaestrada. They knew that in several days’ time, they would return to their everyday lives. While in the first days of the event week, life at home seemed to be faded out, during the last days of the week the gymnasts increasingly linked their daily life into how they perceived the Gymnaestrada, merging it into the stories they told. In some cases, this led to confusion, as the following dialogue between two gymnasts illustrates, which occurred at breakfast the morning before last: What are they doing today? They are going to an amusement park. Eh? Here? In Lausanne? No, my kids at home. (Conversation)

While one gymnasts’ perception was still predominantly influenced by the event’s happenings on site, the other gymnasts’ thoughts were again captured by her life at home. The incremental involvement of daily routines into the Gymnaestrada occurrences was also expressed visually in the form of the clothes the participants wore. During the first days, the participants mainly wore their delegation dress or their performance attire; towards the end of the week, however, the cityscape was increasingly peppered with people in everyday clothes along with the accreditation card around their neck that clearly identified them as a Gymnaestrada participant. One gymnast agreed and confirmed she and her group put their daily dress on ‘when you are in town for no reason, when the displays are over’.

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As in Jaimangal-Jones et al.’s (2010) investigation, the way people dress plays a crucial role in the liminality experience. Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2010, p. 258) argue; People use dress to mediate the interior mental world of the individual and the body and the exterior objective world beyond the self; thus, dress is one of the ways in which their sense of identity is constructed and transacted within social contexts and relations. (p. 258)

In the context of the Gymnaestrada, it seemed as if, by way of going back to everyday clothes, the gymnasts prepared themselves for their return to daily life. Also over and above the dressing aspect, the upcoming end of the event was consciously perceived, yet different approaches on how it was dealt with were identified. One gymnast’s comment; At the end of the week, I was a bid sad. Oh no, the week is already over again, and how quickly it went, and what a pity that it’s over. It could have lasted 2 or 3 days longer, as now you are familiar with the place, and you would like to do that or that… but in the end, you know that it starts one day and ends after one week, you know that. (Conversation)

The gymnast saw the closure of the experience somewhat woefully. Yet, what made it less difficult for her was the awareness that ‘everybody needs to go home, that makes it easier’. Also, another gymnast was not happy about the upcoming end of the week, ‘I can’t get enough of watching performances’, she said. By way of contrast, a group mate admitted that she was rather glad the week in Lausanne was coming to an end. She stated, ‘It’s enough now, I am saturated’. A fellow gymnast joined in, saying ‘It’s good that it’s over, I need a break now’. This is in line with another group member, who commented after the event while laughing, ‘I enjoyed going home as I was so tired’. While everyday life did not matter for the gymnasts in the first days of the week, towards the end of the liminoid experience, it seemed to come up again in the gymnasts’ minds and imagination. In those last days of the event period, stories on everyday life were increasingly linked to, and incorporated into, the participants’ event experiences. The participants were aware of the upcoming end of the liminoid experience, they

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consciously perceived the approaching closure of the event and different coping strategies were adopted to prepare for the cooling down, the moment of returning home.

Cooling Down: Returning Home After a week of amazing experiences and interactions, and no matter which coping strategy was applied, the gymnasts were heading home. They left Lausanne, full of energy, with lovely memories in their suitcases and bags. The gymnasts reached a stage where Turner (1982, p. 47) provides valuable insight into what happened. He suggested, ‘[w]e thus encounter the paradox that the experience of communitas becomes the memory of communitas’. Strikingly, while towards the end of the event week, the gymnasts increasingly integrated life at home into the experiences on site, on the trip back this process was reversed: now elements of the event experience, or the memories thereof, were linked to ordinary life at home. As a story reveals that happened on the journey home, items of the Gymnaestrada, the accreditation card, for example, were incorporated into aspects of the familiar environment at home. ‘We should ask whether we can use the accreditation card for public transport not only in Lausanne, but also at home’. This little joke was responded to by another gymnast saying: ‘Or perhaps we can use the card for parking in the local car park, I mean, after all there is a “P” on it’. The big white letter ‘P’ in a green square, imprinted on the accreditation card, meaning ‘participant’, caused one gymnast to associate it with ‘P’ for ‘parking’. Her comment made the group laugh. Here, the accreditation card became an ambiguous symbol, which Turner (1986) considers to be a typical feature of liminality. This incident was echoed by a group member saying: ‘In one hour, everything is over, we need to behave well then again’. She knew her daily routines would seize her as soon as she was back: When I am back, I always need a day or so to ‘arrive’ back home. It’s good that everyday life catches you right away when you are back, so you are quickly into it again. (Conversation)

Likewise, another gymnast said she was confronted with her life back home immediately. She was a bit sad about it; yet admitted ‘Maybe it’s best like that’. A fellow gymnast, in turn, did not feel sorry:

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No, I wasn’t sad. Well, I mean, you know it happens again in four years… I’m already looking forward to next time. (Conversation)

The event experiences and the memories thereof shaped the way the journey home was perceived. While in the warm-up phase, the gymnasts’ everyday life extended into the journey to the event site, in the cool down, this process was reversed, and the event experiences and memories shaped the process of travelling home.

Conclusion The experience of liminality presupposes transition stages to mark its beginning as well as its ending. The chapter has offered valuable insight into the role that ordinary life at home plays in these transition stages. Before the researched gymnasts taking part in the World Gymnastics for All festival, the World Gymnaestrada, delved into the liminoid experience the event brought along, everyday life not only was part of saying good-bye rituals. It also played a crucial role in the participants’ narratives expressing the joy of anticipation, hence providing support for the findings of Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2010), who came to a similar conclusion in their study of liminality in the context of a dance event. Yet, as soon as the event gained momentum, everyday life seemed to disappear in the gymnasts’ minds and imagination—with notable exceptions. It was only allowed in again towards the end of the liminoid period, when the participants increasingly connected it to the occurrences on site. This process was reversed on the way back home: now, the event experiences were linked to, and merged with, the re-approaching familiar environment and life at home. These considerations offer a context-specific interpretation of Turner’s (1982) suggestion; …that when persons, groups, sets of ideas, etc., move from one level or style of organization or regulation […] to another level, there has to be an interfacial region or […] an interval, however brief, of margin or limen, when the past is momentarily negated, suspended, or abrogated, and the future has not yet begun… (p. 44)

These interpretations are highly contextualised and cannot be generalised, yet they complement, and build upon, the work of, for example, Andrews (2006, 2009), Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2010) and Riches (2011). More

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specifically, the analysis in this chapter sheds light on and elucidates the interplay between liminality and everyday life as well as how each reinforces and shapes the other. The different ways in which ordinary life is perceived in each phase reflects the three-stage process related to liminality. The pre-liminal entails to release everyday life. The liminal or liminoid is constituted on fading everyday life out. The post-liminal implicates letting everyday life back in. The awareness of the liminoid nature of the event with its pre- and post-liminoid stage accompanies the way the event is perceived and experienced. It can, hence, be concluded that through these differences in perceiving ordinary life, the three-stage process of liminality and the particular nature of a liminal or liminoid setting gain powerful parts of their meaning. In spite of its highly contextualised nature, the chapter considerations help to grasp and comprehend how the interplay between liminality and everyday life provides insight into the way an event is experienced, perceived, and understood.

References Andrews, H. (2006). Consuming pleasures: Package tourists in Mallorca. In K. Meethan, A. Anderson, & S. Miles (Eds.), Tourism, consumption and representation: Narratives of place and self (pp. 217–235). Wallingford: CABI Publishing. Andrews, H. (2009). Tourism as a moment of being. Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 2, 5–21. Cohen, A. P. (1985 [2010]). The symbolic construction of community. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Fairley, S. (2009). The role of the mode of transport in the identity maintenance of sport fan travel groups. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 14(2), 205–222. Getz, D. (1991). Festivals, special events and tourism. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Gillett, P., & Kelly, S. (2006). “Non-local” master games participants: An investigation of competitive active sport tourist motives. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 11(3–4), 239–257. Jackson, M. (1996). Introduction: Phenomenology, radical empiricism, and anthropological critique. In M. Jackson (Ed.), Things as they are: New directions in phenomenological anthropology (pp. 1–51). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jaimangal-Jones, D., Pritchard, A., & Morgan, N. (2010). Going the distance: Locating journey, liminality and rites of passage in dance music experiences. Leisure Studies, 29(3), 253–268.

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Mechbach, J., & Lundquist Waneberg, P. (2011). The World Gymnaestrada—A non-competitive event the concept “gymnastics for all” from the perspective of Ling gymnastics. Scandinavian Sports Studies Forum, 2, 99–118. Riches, G. (2011). Embracing the chaos: Mosh pits, extreme metal music and liminality. Journal for Cultural Research, 15(3), 315–332. Rickly-Boyd, J. M. (2012). Lifestyle climbing: Toward existential authenticity. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 17 (2), 85–104. Schechner, R. (1985). Between theater and anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schechner, R. (2006). Performance studies. New York: Routledge. Schwirtz, K.-H. (2006). History of general gymnastics. Moutier: Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique. Shipway, R., & Jones, I. (2008). The great suburban Everest: An “insiders” perspective on experiences at the 2007 Flora London Marathon. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 13(1), 61–77. Thomassen, B. (2009). The uses and meanings of liminality. International Political Anthropology, 2(1), 5–27. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction. Turner, V. (1982). Liminal to liminoid in play, flow, and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. In V. Turner (Ed.), From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play (pp. 20–59). New York City: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Turner, V. (1986). Dewey, Dilthey, and drama: An essay in the anthropology of experience. In V. Turner & E. Bruner (Eds.), The anthropology of experience (pp. 33–45). Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Van Gennep, A. (2005). Übergangsriten [The rites of passage]. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.

CHAPTER 8

Experiencing Abstraction: On Mega-Events, Liminality, and Resistance Andrea Pavoni

1 Emile Durkheim’s society is a monospherical container into which individuals are subsumed by means of sharing ‘social facts’, that is, transcendent collective representations that are pre-existing—and thus unexplained—conditions for human agency. The public ritual is a symbolical process through which the cohesion and continuity of society is reaffirmed and reinforced by generating a ‘collective effervescence’ or ‘electricity’, that like ‘an avalanche grows in its advance’, building the proverbial solidarity among the individuals (2008 [1912]). Durkheim, for the most part, was content with affirming the process of assimilation of particular individuals into the universal of society via the ritual; however, he refrained from explaining how this actually occurs (Fisher-Lichte, 2005). This tendency may be detected in many studies of the quintessential public ritual of our times: The Mega-Event (ME). Here, the unifying and ‘cementing’ role of the ideological and rhetorical machine of the ME on

A. Pavoni (B) DINAMIA’CET, University Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_8

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the host population is usually presupposed, either optimistically or cynically, and yet without explaining the contingent process through which this occurs: viz. the interaction between the phenomenological spectacle of the event and the ontological (re)composition that its actual taking place activates (see Citroni & Pavoni, 2016). To paraphrase the wellknown critique Latour moved against the social sciences, the sociology of MEs has fallen short of explaining how the ME is ‘held together’ in the contingency of its occurrence, and instead has resorted to use static sociological categories that ‘explain away the eventfulness of events by referring them back to a set of conditions that structure and, ultimately, determine them’ (Anderson & Holden, 2008, p. 143).1 Contemporary and fierce opposer of Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde vehemently challenged his presupposition of a uniform, coherent and homogenous society that would supersede human beings by means of transcendent ‘social facts’. Instead, Tarde claimed all ‘facts (including social facts) are contingent compositions emerging out of a complex of difference and repetition’ (Toews, 2003, p. 93).2 Employing Leibniz’s terminology, Tarde suggested that monads, rather than individuals, are the minimal component of society: monads are not given subjects, but rather agencies, such as notions and prejudices, perceptions and expressions, knowledge and desires. Thus, releasing society from transcendent straitjackets, Tarde framed social ontology as an immanent process of emergence of social formations. This, however, did not imply throwing the social into anarchic chaos. Rather, the components of the social always crystallise around stable distributions of ideas, feelings, opinions, practices, regularities, patterns, and rhythms that shape the socio-natural world (Brighenti, 2010; Lazzarato, 2004; Tarde, 2012 [1893]). While there is no room here to explore Tarde’s thought, it is worth pointing out that his conception pierced the Kantian core of Durkheim’s theory, viz. a vision of nature as a chaotic and homogenous substance that humans would order by means of social structures. On a logical level, the presupposition of an undifferentiated substance (either pessimistically chaotic, optimistically common or abstractly absolute) which is assumed as 1 Latour claimed it was time for sociology to begin accounting ‘for how society is held together, instead of using society to explain something else’ (2005, p. 13). 2 ‘Instead of saying, like Durkheim, that we “should treat social facts as a thing”, Tarde says that “all things are society”, and any phenomenon is a social fact’ (Latour, 2002, p. 122).

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external to the transcendent (divine, natural or human) provider of order, is nothing but the implicit and constitutive lever of that very order: i.e. it is the negative dialectical counterpoint which a priori grounds, legitimises and justifies it (cf. Agamben, 1998; Galli, 2001; Schmitt, 2006 [1922]). Tarde’s proposition challenged the implicit presupposition of a homogenous nature external to society, disclosing instead a socio-natural world already provided with its own complexity, and traversed by patterns, rhythms, and regularities that the social scientist is tasked with investigating: The world may seem chaotic, but in actual fact, Tarde says, the social world, just like nature, is dominated by regularities. The task of science is not to impose order on phenomena from the outside through abstract, mental, cognitive operations, rather to recognize the character and principles of this order. (Thomassen, 2014, p. 228)

2 While not sharing the radical ontology of Tarde, Van Gennep was similarly convinced of the inherent complexity of the social and of the inadequacy of Durkheim’s categories to explain it. Rather than postulating transcendent social facts, he was interested in the direct observation of real ‘living facts’, and the way social patterns and regularities intersect and mimic ‘the great rhythms of the universe’ (1960 [1909], p. 194). Differently from Durkheim, whose all-encompassing society subsumes individuals and their agency, van Gennep intended to investigate the relation between social structure and individual agency without rejecting the contingent and generative role of the latter. By doing so, he had to face a fundamental question: how is it possible for a society to survive, i.e. maintain internal cohesion and temporal continuity, notwithstanding the individual changes and the contingent crises that constantly punctuate it? His answer, it is via rites de passage: ritualised transitions —such as the coming of age, marriage, death, and so forth—that have the function of facilitating changes of state without violent shocks for the society (Van Gennep, 1960 [1909]). In these rituals, the participants are actively involved into a performative process, rather than assumed to be passive spectators of a symbolic formalism. In his well-known description of the ritual process, van Gennep distinguished three phases: the separation of the individual from a given status (pre-liminal); the entrance into a marginal zone of suspension (liminal);

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and the reincorporation into society (post-liminal). By ‘discovering’ this middle phase, van Gennep problematised the ritual process, opening a contingent zone of potentialities where both the socially regenerative force of the ritual, and its own dangers, reside. Liminality is a spacetime of exception in which the order is (precariously) confirmed via its momentary suspension, in order to facilitate the adaptation of (phenomenological) experience to (ontological) structure (Agamben, 2005). Rather than an a-spatial and a-temporal projection of the social structure onto a passive crowd, rituals appear as the delicate and performative actualisation of the social structure itself: an uncertain, precarious, and turbulent taking place which opens a liminality that the participants have to ‘go through’3 in order for the structural transition to occur, and the social order to be (re)generated. In this sense, it is perhaps reductive to see the ritual as static facilitator of the crossing between pre-established boundaries. While in van Gennep they are, for the most part, presented as functional ‘lubricants’ of the social structure, rituals also seem to play a creative and productive role: liminality, in fact, is not simply ‘found’ but is produced by the ritual itself, by opening up a spatio-temporal limbo that prevents a simple and smooth coincidence between separation and reincorporation, in this way releasing the potential for novel transformations (Remotti, 1981, p. xxvi). It may be argued that the liminal zone, opened by the ritual, not only functions as a link between a present and a future state but is also constitutive to the latter by means of unleashing the potentialities locked within the former. Liminality is the generative core of the social, the space of exception in and through which the frictional encounter between structure and agency occurs. Yet, liminality is as much a generative necessity for the social structure as it is a risk, its contingency being potentially damaging to the structure itself: hence the need to secure the process via ritualistic protocols. This dualistic dimension may be observed also in classic public rituals. Here, the likelihood for the ritual to succeed—i.e. to convey to desired ideological and affective effect on the participants—is dependent on an ‘exceptional’ mechanism, thereby including the participants into an extraordinary liminality of the ritual while simultaneously

3 As per the etymological root of experience, viz. ex-per: going through from the outside.

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excluding their dangerous contingency.4 In this sense, the mechanism of liminality requires to be managed by a sort of ‘meta-ritual’ of control, as Vida Bajc (2007) argues in her insightful description of George W. Bush’s 2005 presidential inauguration, where she sees a classic public ritual of investiture complemented by ritualistic bureaucratic, securitarian, and legal procedures, that are meant to immunise the public ritual from the uncertain liminality opened by its taking place, and thus to ‘lubricate’ its performance towards a desired outcome.

3 Turner, who is usually credited with having ‘rediscovered’ van Gennep from half a century of oblivion, eagerly pursued a processual understanding of rituals, not as the frozen mirror of social structures, but rather as the performative and recurrent moment of their seismic instantiation (1967, 1969). Liminality, Turner wrote, is an opening in which the separation between agency and structure momentarily collapses, as the structure liquefies into a malleable ontological substance, a ‘flow’ that is pregnant with transformative potentialities.5 Turner employs the notion of ‘communitas’ to refer to the unimpaired experience of unity that momentarily unfolds once the “narrow, stuffy rooms” of the structure are suspended, liberating this “unmediated relationship between historical, idiosyncratic, concrete individuals’ (1982, p. 45). Liminality is a delicate space-time in which ‘a generalized social bond has ceased to be’, and the immanent being-together of the ‘communitas ’, in his words, ‘breaks in through the interstices of structure’ (1969, p. 128). Liminal moments release an experience of communitas that is also paradoxically individualising, since ‘the more spontaneously “equal” people become, the more distinctively “themselves” they become’ (1982, p. 47). On the contrary, once the institutional straitjacket of norms and structures is 4 The term ‘exception’ literally means to take in the outside (from ex, outside, and capere, to take). The mechanism of exception is the dispositive allowing to ‘take in’ the chaotic, ever-escaping outside (life, world, space…), and domesticate it, that is, to simultaneously including space by excluding its conflictual, eventful, and contingent materiality (cf. Agamben, 2005). 5 ‘I would like to say simply that what I call communitas has something of a “flow” quality … “flow” for me is already in the domain of what I have called “structure” … [it] seems to be one of the ways in which “structure” may be transformed or “liquefied” … into communitas again’ (Turner, 1982, p. 58).

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imposed back, the individuality is sacrificed to the conformity to the social order. The ‘spontaneity and immediacy of communitas’, in any case, could not be sustained for long: it ‘soon develops (protective social) structures, in which free relationship[s] between individuals become converted into [a] norm-governed relationship between social personae’ (ibid.). In this dialectic between structure and anti-structure (or communitas ) Turner seems to lean for the latter, that he assumes as a more genuine, promising and authentic condition—a preference that will play an important role in the fertile ground this concept found within the celebration of difference, flow, and anti-structure of the postmodern turn (see Thomassen, 2014, p. 83). Key in this regard was Turner’s (problematic) attempt to apply the notion of liminality to modernity, which is what I am interested in addressing in this section. The argument goes as follows: industrial revolution prompted a rationalisation, specialisation, compartmentalisation, and secularisation of everyday life. The ‘original’ notion of liminality, which belonged to the ‘relatively stable, cyclical and repetitive system’ of small-scale traditional societies, is incompatible with the modern context (1982, p. 29). In modernity, therefore, we do not find the liminal but only the pseudo-liminal, or the ‘liminoid’. While liminality has a central social and political role in ‘traditional’ societies, the liminoid refers to phenomena that ‘develop apart from the central economic and political processes, along the margins, in the interfaces and interstices of central and servicing institutions’ (ibid., p. 54). In an increasingly rationalised and industrialised society in which ritual aspects have been marginalised and confined to the sphere of the leisure economy, it is exactly in this sphere that the liminoid will be found. Liminoid moments lack the ‘structuring’ quality of liminality: they are more individual than social, more extemporaneous than systemic, more external than integrated, as ‘plural, fragmentary, and experimental’ micro-interruptions that do not really touch the core mechanism of the structure itself (ibid., p. 54). As the reader may note, Turner’s conceptual effort to apply liminality to modern times appears rather simplistic and sketchy. Following Bjørn Thomassen’s helpful summary (2014, pp. 83–86), we may briefly list its main limits. First, the traditional/modern dichotomy on which it rests is extremely crude and simplistic, as it is the seeming coincidence between modernity and rationality. Second, the confinement of the liminoid to the sphere of leisure prevents us, in advance, from exploring the possible applications of the concept at the level of socio-political structures. Since

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he assumed liminal situations to have the quality of being ‘collective’, tied to ‘structural cycles’ and ‘integrated into the total social process’, one wonders why Turner did not try and look for similarly collective, structural, and totalising instances also in modern times, instead of confining the liminoid within the apolitical sphere of leisure.6 Third, by situating them in the periphery of social structure, liminoid moments lack a quintessential quality of liminality, that is, its relation with social transition. Fourth, in his treatment of the liminoid, Turner prioritises the playful, creative, and enlivening quality of the liminal, to the detriment of its dangerous, violent, and problematic aspects (e.g. St. John, 2001)—again, betraying the very core of the original concept. Ultimately Turner can be said to have contributed to the success of a depoliticised and naively affirmative understanding of the liminal. A direct consequence, I suggest, of his romantic understanding of communitas as the homogenous “source” of structure, a ‘formless reality out of which forms emerge’ (Thomassen, 2009, p. 23; Turner, 1967, p. 97). This is doubly problematic. On a conceptual level, the rigid structure/antistructure dialectic on which this understanding rests ultimately defuses the potential of the liminal: if it is simply understood as anti-structure, then the liminal is made to be logically dependent on structure, as its mere dialectical counterpart (Gluckman, 1977). This prevents a truly radical understanding of liminality as not simply structure’s inverted mirror from unfolding. Rather, liminality is the threshold that interrupts (and threatens to break) the structure/anti-structure dialectics itself. On a political level, the positing of a ‘formless reality, out of which forms emerge’, ultimately fails to grasp that this formlessness is the implicit presupposition of the structure itself. In other words, the political trouble here is in assuming that beneath a given social structure lies an undifferentiated, and innocent (i.e. power-free), matter. The corollary championing of liminality as ‘liberating’ does not take into account that reality is never an innocent and homogeneous ‘culturally-relative flat ontology but a tilted, power-structured surface’ (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015, p. 3). ‘Beneath’ social structures there is no innocent flow of things, but rather an already complex and heterogeneous reality that must be addressed

6 While the sphere of leisure is not necessarily apolitical, this is how Turner seems to understand it (see Rowe, 2008).

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as such, rather than naively ‘liberated’.7 In doing so, Turner’s romantic connotation of communitas blatantly misses the inherent violence that lies at its core (cf. Esposito, 1998). There is an implicit ‘fallacy of transparent immediacy’ (Grusin, 2015, p. 131)—i.e. the belief that a real sociality may be only achieved via the erasure of the (structural) medium—that informs, I believe, the naïve libertarianism that characterises the postmodern interpretation of liminality ‘as a celebration of human creativity and freedom, connected to normlessness and going-beyond existing traditions that bound and limit human beings’ (Thomassen, 2014, p. 85). A celebration that is dangerously close to, if not overlapping with, the very spirit of neoliberal capitalism (cf. Boltanski & Chiapello, 2007).8

4 Experience is arguably the key feature of liminality: how it is produced, controlled, and what effects it engenders. Albeit this aspect was at the forefront in van Gennep’s approach, Turner somehow deprioritised it by mostly employing liminality as a way to explore the structure/antistructure dialectics. Later in his life he would turn his attention on the experience of liminality via an intense engagement with the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, conceptualising the tripartite structure of the ritual as the structure of experience itself (Szakolczai, 2009; Turner, 1985). Yet, in his conceptualisation of the liminoid Turner still relies on a compartmentalised understanding, which tends to situate experience (of communitas) on one side, and (abstract) structure on the other. It is not surprising then that ‘liminoid’ experiences, as we saw, ultimately do not affect the social structure and thus play no part in the process of social transition. We may indeed argue that Turner’s unconvincing attempt to apply liminality to modernity was hindered by its inadequate reflection on the way in which modernity deeply modifies the relation between experience and structure in the first place.

7 For a critique of the political trouble with assuming an innocent ‘flow of things’ as the ontological substance of reality, see Pavoni (2018a, Chapter 6). 8 The ‘compulsion towards liquidity, flow, and an accelerated circulation of what is physics, sexual, or pertaining to the body is the exact replica of the force which rules market value: capital must circulate; gravity and any fixed point must disappear’ (Baudrillard, 1987, p. 25).

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According to Szakolczai (2000), this is mainly due to Turner’s lack of engagement with social and political theory, a limit he sets up to address moving from the assumption that, if what is at stake with liminality is the suspension of a given social order and the opening of an uncertain zone of indistinction through which a transition may occur, then it is at the macroscale of socio-political processes that we should look, whether we are to mobilise a consistently ‘modern’ notion of liminality. Not only at this scale, liminality no longer appears as ‘optional’ (as Turner instead assumed the liminoid to be, as opposed to the ‘compulsory’ quality it supposedly has in ‘traditional’ societies). It does not appear as (subjectively) compulsory either: modern liminality simply occurs, as result of structural processes that exceed individual agency and control. As Szakolczai argues, to characterise modernity is a collapse of the given social order which is not followed by a phase of reincorporation, and rather opens an indefinite liminality in which, willingly or not, we are all thrown (ibid., pp. 207–217). Traditional structures have definitely collapsed, and we are left in a continuous ‘search for order’ that can neither rely on previous structures to be reinstalled, nor on the ‘masters’ and ‘guardians’ of order that oversaw traditional rituals (ibid., p. 210). Globalised and indefinite, liminality has become a permanent condition. Admittedly, the assumption of modernity as a liquefied ontology that plunges individuals into existential dislocation is not a very original one. Even less convincing is the solution Szakolczai—as well as Thomassen, who follows his path—propose viz. to counter such a dislocation by channelling it back into a sense of ‘feeling-at-home’, by finding a resting ground in the ‘concreteness of lived space’.9 On a political level, the proposition appears suspiciously conservative. While the postmodern exaltation of movement and flow is hardly a critically valuable stance, given its promiscuous complicity with the ethos of neoliberal capitalism; at the same time anachronistic, and ultimately unproductive, appears the conservative yearning for a stable and concrete ground for action. This position betrays a romantic nostalgia for the ‘loss home’ and a fetishising emphasis on the ‘concrete’ that is dangerously close to—and thus unwittingly

9 Thomassen (2014, p. 226), following Szakolczai, proposes that this permanent condition of liminality ‘be channelled back into a feeling-at-home … re-establish[ing] some kind of background in which individual action can be understood and measured, and in which frenetic movement finds a rest. More than ever, we need to turn on the concreteness of lived space’.

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prone to co-optation by—conservative politics, that on the priority of authenticity, roots, and soils have always been grounded (e.g. Doel, 1999, pp. 14–15; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2011; Žižek, 2000, pp. 258– 267). On a conceptual level, by relying on an unproductive opposition between the abstract and the concrete, this position fails to grasp the novel spatio-temporal logic introduced by modern urban capitalism, and the extent to which this very logic is constitutive vis-à-vis this conceptual impasse. As Paolo Virno piercingly stresses, the assumption of a separation between ‘concrete lived experience’ and abstraction is not merely a conceptual mistake, but the material consequence of capitalist modernity itself (2001; Osborne, 2004; Pavoni, 2018b).10 I argue that this separation is the split around which we may rethink liminality in a modern guise. While in the liminal rituals explored by van Gennep and Turner the experience of liminality or communitas that the participant underwent was crucial; what characterises the contemporary condition is a seeming ‘inability’ to experience liminality as such. Today, the actual, sensible, and concrete reality of the sites we inhabit is traversed and shaped by a variety of abstract forces, mechanisms, and apparatuses that are increasingly independent from the sites themselves, and whose scale, speed, and extension exceed not only our conceptual grasp but also our phenomenological experience. As we are to see, the movement of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation through which capitalism materialises—and thus the structural shocks that it thrives on (cf. Klein, 2007)—do produce and multiply an ontological liminality which, for the most part, remains beyond experience: the gap ‘between local phenomenology and global structures’ keeps widening (Srnicek, 2012). Hence the hypothesis we are to explore: a conceptualisation of liminality that would be appropriate to modernity must focus on this quintessentially modern ‘incapacity’ to experience the ontological liminality that is produced by the contemporary capitalism.

10 More precisely, Virno notes that the distinction between ‘theory’ and ‘life’ is not a theoretical illusion, but rather ‘the material result of material conditions’ (2001, p. 167).

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5 Liminality, we saw, is a space-time of exception in which the order is (precariously) confirmed via its momentary suspension, so as to facilitate the adaptation of (phenomenological) experience to (ontological) structure. Whether in pre-modern societies these two dimensions may be said to occupy the same spatio-temporal ‘world’, what is peculiar about modernity is their disjunction. Modernity, Fredric Jameson argued, introduces a disjunction between experience and abstraction, between the phenomenological perception of the everyday life and the abstract connections, processes, and flows, that structure and organise it. It was imperialism, Jameson argues, that first brought this to the surface, as the citizen of the colony, he writes, was unable to perceive or experience ‘the radical otherness of the colonial life, colonial suffering and exploitation, let alone the structural connections between that and this, between daily life in the metropolis and the absent space of the colony’ (Jameson, 2007, p. 157). In the urban wanderings of the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) this condition was already lyrically expressed: the transient mismatch between the everyday experience of the urban dweller and the abstract, globalising and unexperienceable process of capitalist urbanisation: ‘Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville/Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d’un mortel)’.11 As early urban thinkers began to perceive since the end of nineteenth century, capitalism introduces a novel spatio-temporal logic based on a complex dialectics between abstract and concrete, place and non-place, one that is profoundly entangled with the process of urbanisation. In his 1903s key text, Georg Simmel described the ‘money economy’ of the globalising capitalism as a force that ‘hollows out the core of things’ reducing everything to a comparable and measurable quantity (2002 [1903], p. 14). This is the abstraction of the capital, the pure form of a non-site into which all the sites are extracted, what Henri Lefebvre described as capital’s production of ‘abstract space’ and ‘linear rhythm’ that fragments, homogenises, and hierarchises urban space (1991 [1974]). This abstract urban form ‘unites a differential whole in which every particular “place” is rendered “equi-valent ” in a universal

11 Old Paris is gone (cities change—alas!—more quickly than a mortal’s heart); Author’s translation. This line appears in Baudelaire’s collection Les Fleurs du Mal, published in 1857.

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circulation and exchange’ (Cunningham, 2005, p. 20). Enter capitalist urbanisation: a process whereby local contexts are deterritorialised from their contingent relations and simultaneously reterritorialised into a global non-place; a disembedded networks of circulation and flows of which each single city, each single urban space, become nodes (cf. Brenner, 2013; Deleuze & Guattari, 2008 [1980]; Sassen, 1991; Soja, 1996). Capitalism may be said to function as a machine for the extraction of value that constantly prolongs, bends, and empties places by force, adapting them to its own rhythms and diagrams; a process that today is further intensified by a global infrastructure of computation that shapes the reality in which we live at a speed and scale that greatly escape our capacity to experience it (Bratton, 2016). To be sure, however, abstraction is never simply ‘abstract’. Abstract processes, structures, and concatenations must always take place in the turbulent singularity of everyday life, materialising into concrete sociospatial relations and shaping urban experience accordingly (Cunningham, 2005). As Neil Brenner (2013) helpfully summarises, the urban is a ‘concrete abstraction’ in which the contradictory socio-spatial relations of capitalism (commodification, capital circulation, capital accumulation, and associated forms of political regulation/contestation) are at once territorialized (embedded within concrete contexts and thus fragmented) and generalized (extended across place, territory, and scale and thus universalized). (p. 95)

This simultaneous territorialisation and deterritorialisation is always problematic, turbulent, and sketchy. The abstract rhythms and diagrams of the capital are always actualised in the contingency of a given locale: they take place in the turbulent singularity of everyday life, which always resists being fully translated into them (Tsing-Lowenhaupt, 2004). In fact, neoliberal capitalism appears to thrive on this turbulence, which it purposefully generates as part the ‘shock and awe’ strategy that characterises it (Harvey, 2005; Klein, 2007). While such structural ‘shocks’ open the ontological liminality on which capitalism thrives, the ‘awe’ that accompanies them is meant to minimise them on the surface by keeping the split between experience and abstraction alive. This is perfectly clear whether we observe the strategic role that experience assumed in this context. Since the end of nineteenth century, experience has become the fundamental battleground of aesthetic

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capitalism and its experience economy (Bohme, 2017). Nowhere is this more evident as in the aesthetic architecture of the so-called society of comfort, whose genealogy has been compellingly provided by Peter Sloterdijk. Building on the visionary reflections of Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, and Guy Debord among others, Sloterdijk describes the surfacing of comfort societies through the notion of ‘interiorisation’, viz. the historical process of integration of social life into safe, comforting, commodified and entertaining spaces, relations, and practices, from which any risk must be expunged (2013, 2016). In the contemporary city the institutions, strategies, and technologies of security and entertainment increasingly converge towards the common objective of producing commodified experiences of safety and safe experiences of consumption, simultaneously arousing and pacifying the ‘experience’ of being-in-the-city, by frenetically ‘animating’ the urban via eventful entertainment which is simultaneously stabilised by security procedures and legal injunctions so as to be safe, consumable, and capitalisable (Brighenti & Pavoni, 2019; Thrift, 2011). Comfort may be said to function as a phenomenological complement to the ontological process of urbanisation: it provides a safe and enticing, ‘homely’ refuge from dislocation which is available, however, only to those able to afford and willing to enter this ‘comfort-animated artificial continent’, floating ‘in the ocean of poverty’ (Sloterdijk, 2013, p. 195).12 The experience economy of urban capitalism provides an aesthetic response to Thomassen’s and Szakolai’s search for a homecoming, one that however rests on a surgical split between a homely and yet exclusionary experience of comfort, and the structural asymmetries that keep it in place. It is in the context of urban events and more significantly in so-called MEs, that this contradiction appears to be particularly magnified and, at the same time, problematised.

6 Albeit social and political events have always been part of everyday life in the cities, their ‘use’ as a precise strategy of urban branding and development is a rather more recent affair. Today, the ‘festivalisation’ of urban politics theorised by Häussermann and Siebel (1993) more than two 12 This is explicit in the case of security policies in Gothenburg, Sweden, where the public space is semantically domesticated by the public campaign THINK: ‘we want to create a feeling of being “at home” by making everyone seeing the city as our “common living room”’ (Thörn, 2011, pp. 989, 997).

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decades ago is a fully fledged reality: cities today ‘need to be eventful’, Richards and Palmer (2010) suggest, it is through events that the ‘most precious of modern commodities – symbolic capital’ (p. 12) is generated. Eventification, as per Jacob’s (2013) definition, is the ‘process in which urban space, itself, is represented as a spectacle and transformed into an aesthetised place of consumption’ (p. 3). Nowhere is this more evident as in the case of the ME, the urban event par excellence, and a quintessential modern public ritual. As Roche (2000) precisely writes, ‘to understand mega-events better is to understand something more broadly about the nature and fate of human agency and social structure, and of continuity and change, in modernity’ (p. 235) (Also see Dashper, Fletcher, & McCullough, 2014). If the ME may be understood as a privileged locus to explore ‘the relation between modern existence and its forms’ (Cacciari, 1995, p. 3), this can be fruitfully done with respect to at least four overlapping dimensions: the ideological, exemplified by the rhetorics of (national) communion, cohesion and togetherness that encompasses the ME (e.g. Ismer, 2011; Jansson, 2005; Stephens, 2015); the experiential: viz. the ME as an urban-wide installation that retunes and rebrands the rhythm of the city within a disembedded network of microgeographies (Venues, Live Sites, Fan Walks etc.) that provide immersive ‘hyper-experiences’ to visitors and inhabitants alike (e.g. Frew & McGillivray, 2008; Pavoni, 2011); the securitarian, explicit in the massive apparatus of control, prevention, surveillance, and exceptional juridification, which functions as a sort of ‘meta-ritual’ whose strict procedures patrol the symbolical, physical, and economic consistency of the event (Bajc, 2007; Boyle & Haggerty, 2009; Richards, Fussey, & Silke, 2011); the structural, i.e. the ME as a key clog in the process of capitalist urbanisation: not simply ‘exceptional’, the ME is better understood as an ‘explicitation’ of this process, which its ideological, experiential, and securitarian apparatuses remarkably intensify and accelerate (e.g. Steinbrink, 2014). The ME, in other words, functions as an effective mediator between the different scales, forms, and velocities of urbanisation, facilitating the unplugging of local urban spaces and their re-plugging onto the global flows of capital’s circulation, accumulation, and exchange (e.g. Hayes & Karamichas, 2011; Müller, 2015; Pavoni, 2015).13 13 A mediation whose significance is testified by their ever-increasing employment in so-called ‘emerging states’—see for instance the various mega-events recently taking place in BRICS countries (Grix & Lee, 2013).

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Usually, the relation between MEs and liminality is explored at either the ideological level of its discourse, or at the phenomenological level of its carnivalistic occurrence. For instance, Anderson and Holden (2008, p. 155) explore the ‘topologically complex space-time of the non-yet’ that is released by the ‘advent’ of the event, that is, the winning of the ‘bid’ by the host city that officialises the event well before its physical manifestation. This liminal zone of hope and expectation is what Jansson sees as key to public spectacles: the production of a ‘public sense of fatefulness’, and the simultaneously necessity to ‘promote a (superficial) solution’ by means of fine-tuning expectations and promises into preferred narratives, procedures, and practices (2005, p. 1672). Focusing on their mediatised dimension, Dayan and Katz (1992, p. 104) note how these events, by suspending existent structures and norms, literally ‘irrigate’ social life ‘by the overflowing of communitas’, which opens a liminality in which reality shifts from the indicative (what is) to the subjunctive (what could be), and in which the community itself may be cemented, or altered (Ismer, 2011). Likewise, Boullier (2010, p. 93) observes that the ‘fusional instant’ of a living crowd is simultaneously what a public event is made of, as well as the main source of danger, given intrinsically unpredictable agency of crowds (Canetti, 1994 [1960]). Every event, as every ritual, is premised on such a ‘controlled decontrolling’, the contradictory task of simultaneously generating and regulating enthusiasm (Elias & Dunning, 1986; Iles, 2009). This is simplified in event-management literature, where the concepts of liminality and communitas are referred to as veritable assets to be ‘leveraged’, i.e. stimulated, channelled, and capitalised upon, in order to maximise the desired outcome of the event (e.g. Chalip, 2006, 2018). In most of these accounts, liminality appears as a synonymous of a collective effervescence (e.g. Green & Chalip, 1998; Ismer, 2011; Kemp, 1999; Lewis & Dowsey-Magog, 1993). In this way it loses its intrinsically destabilising quality, at times to a disconcertingly naïve extent, as in Schlegel, Pfizner, and Koenigstorfer’s (2017) suggestion that the ‘liminoid atmosphere’ of the ME ‘provides a safe space for matters that are highly sensitive to society’ (p. 608). If anything, the opposite is the case: if the MEs may offer a space for raising sensitive matters, it is far from being a ‘safe’ one.14

14 As can be found in the very regulations: ‘any demonstration of political’ propaganda is forbidden by law’ (Olympic Charter, art. 50, c. 3) since it would perturb the ‘festive

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More cynical approaches deem the ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ experience produced by the ME as a smokescreen that appeases the public while concealing the power relations and structural transformations occurring beneath its blinding spectacle (e.g. Broudehoux, 2007; Hiller, 2000; Lenskyj, 2002). While these reflections surely have a point, they tend to present individuals as passive consumers of hegemonic spectacles and their narcotising effervescence. True, the ‘suspension’ of structures and rules provoked by the ME appears, at a more profound level, to actually confirm them: both the spatial logics and urban aesthetic of the capital, as well as the post-political governmentality of the contemporary city, appears to be intensified and concentrated, and not suspended, by the ME. It is insufficient, however, to simply suggest that what characterises the event be the production of a phenomenological, atmospheric, or ideological liminality (regardless of whether one optimistically assumes this liminality as holding the potential to reinforce and transform a community, or cynically points to its function as a soothing spectacle concealing what is actually going on). Instead, I argue that the liminality opened by the ME should be understood at a deeper, ontological level, as a liminal space-time through which the process of neoliberal urbanisation contradictorily occurs. This is also, incidentally, what characterises the liminality that MEs open, as opposed to ‘classic’ public rituals, as a result of MEs (recent) entanglement with the process of neoliberal urbanisation. Toscano and Kinkle (2015) recently drew attention to the difference between the original and authorised 1971 cover of Guy Debord’s Society of Spectacle (which shows a map of the world with different colours depicting current and estimated global commercial relations), and the cover of the unauthorised 1977 English edition, showing a cinema audience wearing 3-D glasses. The latter was functional in conveying the most popular interpretation of the theory, according to which humans under aesthetic capitalism are a passive crowd in the process of being homogenously brainwashed. The former, instead, suggests a more complex interpretation of the Spectacle: not a mere (smoke)screen projected towards the observer but a ‘social relation among people, mediated by images’; not simply an ideology to be deconstructed but a ‘Weltanschauung that has been actualized, translated into the material realm – a world view

atmosphere’ and ‘impair the enjoyment of the Event by other spectators, or detract from the sporting focus of the Event’ (FIFA Stadium Code of Conduct 4.e, 5.6.e).

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transformed into a material force’ (Debord, 1994 [1967], p. § 1.5). Coming back to our discussion, the resulting ethico-political question is not that of restoring an authentic experience of communitas against the ME spectacle, or awakening the sleeping crowd from this spectacular veneer, but rather that of exploring the ontological liminality that the ME produces and addressing its aesthetic consequences—viz. the ‘liminal’ split between experience and conditions of possibility of experience itself, that is, the abstract structures and forces that shape it.

7 Sociological and anthropological approaches to the liminality of MEs frequently explore them as modern public rituals while overlooking the historical process that led to their contemporary ‘urbanisation’. This results in ahistorical perspectives that copy-paste Durkheim’s approach to the present. Yet, I argue that what is qualitatively peculiar to contemporary MEs is not the carnival atmosphere they produce, but the urban transition they enact, in the physical and socio-economic sense. This is a recent development, initiated towards the end of the twentieth century with the surfacing of legacy as the core category of ME politics. Since its officialisation into a compulsory requirement for host cities, legacy has profoundly modified the relations between the ME and the city, turning the former into a structural and systemic (and no longer peripheral and extemporaneous) mechanism for the social and physical regeneration of the latter.15 For the optimists, legacy allows for inserting evaluation and accountability within the ME process. For the pessimists, it is a ‘consistent justificatory apparatus’ that built consensus around an event by neutralising its controversies with the vague promise of future rewards (e.g. Costa, 2014, p. 114; Preuss, 2013). Both interpretations have a point, but still see legacy as an external tool, while I have suggested one needs to understand it as internal to, i.e. directly constitutive of, the relation between the ME and the city (Pavoni, 2015). 15 Albeit MEs have always been supposed to be more than just a festival, awareness of their actual and potential role vis-à-vis their urban impact only began to emerge in the end of last century (most notably since the Barcelona ‘92) and was effectively officialised in the beginning of this century, becoming a compulsory requirement for a host city to enter the bid stage. Since 2003 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) included in the Olympic Charter the mission: ‘to promote a positive legacy from the Olympic Games to the host cities and host countries’, see Pavoni (2015).

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Well before the ME is even officialised, legacy functions as both a strategy and a discourse that produce urban voids, that is, socially and physically marginalised spaces which are representationally and politically plunged into a liminal condition, suspended between a seemingly unbearable present of degradation, danger, ugliness, and pollution; and a promising future of (event-led) regeneration. In other words, and before any consideration about the positive or negative impact of the ME, the viral effect of legacy has already reshaped the urban regimes of visibility, including certain spaces, things, and beings within its apparatus while excluding them, that is, depriving them of visibility and agency (Raco & Tunney, 2010). On a rhetorical level, this occurs by framing these spaces as ‘wasteland’, ‘void’, ‘emptiness’, ‘dead’: that is, blank, inert, and neutral (i.e. power-free) places in need of being regenerated, reanimated, and reactivated (Pavoni, 2010). On a structural level, this occurs de facto allowing social and physical ‘degradation’ to occur via systematic institutional abandonment, in this way allowing the economical and symbolic value of a place to plunge, and thus turning them into logical—and financially convenient—objects of regeneration projects (Caselli & Ferreri, 2013). In this way urban sites are (socially, economically, and aesthetically) deterritorialised from their spatio-temporal complexity and reterritorialised into the flow of circulation, valorisation, accumulation, and financial speculation, well before the ME process begin. The capitalist process of ‘creative destruction’ seemingly find in the ME its sublimation: destruction, occurring via ‘the destabilization of extant social relationships, institutions, and structural arrangements’; and creation, occurring by rebranding of the urban space into a secured spectacle of consumption (Boycoff, 2013; Gotham, 2016; Horne, 2012). Though this veritable rite de passage, as per van Gennep’s classic formulation, space is symbolically, socio-economically, and physically translated— and indeed depoliticised—into a ‘neutral territory’, a liminal zone of contingency pregnant with (economical and financial) potentialities. And yet, liminality is never fully controllable. Rather than simple ‘instruments of hegemonic power’, MEs should be seen as ‘destabilising events that display inequalities and social problems, pro-voke intense conflict and engender collective struggles’ (Gotham, 2011, p. 200). They are ‘moments of discontinuity’, as Dansero, Del Corpo, Mela, and Ropolo (2011) suggest, which ‘effectively reveal … the dynamics and tensions of globalisation processes’ (p. 196). In this sense, we may understand MEs as a relevant instance of what Rahola (2014) terms ‘frictious sites’, where

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materialise the ‘violent and open-ended encounters between capital apparatuses and logics of translation into scalable inventories and the un-reproducible, subjective and non-scalable experience of urban forms of life’ (p. 395).16 The ‘abstract structuring’ of the ME never exhausts the ‘productive possibilities’ of the urban17 : in fact, it multiplies them, insofar as the ontological liminality it unfolds releases ‘new processes, forms, structures, patterns, experiences and entities that were previously not present’ (Stenner, 2017, p. 16). It is this ontological quality that makes the liminality opened by the ME simultaneously conducive to their urbanising impact as well as vulnerable to contestation, reappropriation, failure, and resistance. In other words, the destruction on which the ‘disaster capitalism’ of MEs is grounded simultaneously holds a liminal generative force, that of those ‘processes, forms, structures, patterns, experiences and entities that were previously not present’, and whose uncontrollable production exceeds the apparatus of (physical, social, and symbolical) control of the ME itself. Translating Moncrieff’s (2018, pp. 86–94) insightful analysis of corporate responsibility to this context, it follows that a critical approach to the ME must seek to craft tools and concepts able to ‘better capture the relevant modes of existence’ that are simultaneously included and excluded by its apparatus: tools and concepts, as she suggests, that would allow to both ‘sense’ and ‘make sense’ of these ‘submerged parts’, and the distributed paths through which corporate actions form and impact on them.

8 Visual artist Lewis Baltz once observed that ‘to know that an apparently unbroken expanse of land is overlaid with invisible lines demarcating the pattern of future development is to perceive it in a very different way than one would otherwise’ (2012 [1980], p. 45). Urban sites, we saw, are invisibly remapped by global economic forces, abstract financial speculations, and branded aesthetic imaginaries which are increasingly disembedded from their phenomenological and physical qualities, and which prolong them towards hypothetical and yet fully material urban 16 On the notion of friction, see Tsing-Lowenhaupt (2004). 17 Here I am paraphrasing from Cunningham (2005), who contends that ‘the practical

productive possibilities of the metropolitan system of connectivity are not exhausted, in advance, by their abstract structuring by the conditions of capital accumulation’ (p. 22).

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futures whose complexity and scale escape—but deeply shape—the experience of their inhabitants (cf. Mackay, 2015). In this text I have suggested to understand modern liminality in relation to this fracture between experience and conditions of possibility of experience itself, and thus the structures and forces that shape it. From this hypothesis follows an ethico-political task that is quite different from the attempt to restore an authentic experience of communitas against the neoliberal spectacle, or to rebuild a homely ground that would withstand ontological liquefaction. ‘The aim of political aesthetics’, following Srnicek (2012), ‘should be to try and grasp these accelerating lines that compose the world, and to turn them into an intelligible, tractable plane of consistency’ (pp. 10–11): that is, making experienceable, and thus amenable to action, those elusive forces, diagrams, and rhythms that shape our being in the world (Guattari, 2006 [1992]; Jameson, 1990). Brian Holmes’ (2008) notion of ‘reverse imagineering’ may offer some suggestions in this sense. Take for instance the artistic project Nike Ground-Rethinking Space, by Eva and Franco Mattes. This project consisted of 13 info boxes placed on the Karlsplatz in Vienna, which informed about its impending renaming as NikePlatz.18 Protests by residents, the press, and Nike itself followed. As the artists commented, the intention was ‘to produce a collective hallucination capable of altering people’s perception of the city in this total, immersive way’.19 By intersecting some of the dormant ‘lines’ implicitly fermenting in the city, accelerating, and thus making them perceptible via a dystopically magnified experience, the work actualised a latent potential pattern of future urban development into a sensible form. Suddenly made experienceable, these ‘invisible lines’ collided with existent bodies, ideas, and desires as regards public space, letting a tangible experience and awareness of the existent contradictions emerge. We could frame in this sense also the work performed by various artists/activists during the London 2012 Olympics, who challenged the material imaginary of the Olympic Brandscape (the pre-emptive ‘destruction’ of the to-be-regenerated area of Hackney, London into a dead space; and its ‘creation’ into rebranded future), by seeking to ‘sense’ and ‘make sense of’ (via various artistic practices) the submerged realities, things,

18 See http://0100101110101101.org/nike-ground/. 19 Retrieved from https://rhizome.org/art/artbase/artwork/nike-ground/.

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and bodies that inhabited its complexity, albeit symbolically and materially invisibilised.20 The value of such practices of ‘reverse imagineering’ lies in their potential to challenge the pernicious effects of neoliberal urbanisation, without limiting themselves to the mere occupation of physical spaces of resistance. The latter is surely an important strategy, and yet a limited one vis-à-vis the contemporary spatio-temporal complexity. All too often, it risks morphing into a fetishism of ‘direct action’, resigned to piecemeal attempts at carving temporary autonomous zones of ‘radicalist’ self-fulfilment that remain innocuously peripheral to the dominant imaginary. In this sense, critically challenging and resisting the ‘shock and awe’ mechanism of neoliberal capitalism requires exploiting its liminal potential in order to challenge the ‘colonisation of our collective ideas of the future of the urban environment’ (Berry-Slater & Iles, 2009), while avoiding the comforting claustrophobia of the concrete, the local, and the lived. As Negarestani (2015) puts it, ‘localism is not the answer to problems at the level of the local precisely because it cannot adequately examine the situatedness of a local domain within a global structure, its point of liaison with other local domains’ (p. 227). This points to a strategy that directly challenges the split between experience and abstraction by moving beyond the unproductive dichotomy between the abstract and the concrete, and rather addressing what is ‘non-local, abstract, and rooted deep in our everyday infrastructure’ (Williams & Srnicek, 2013). Interestingly, it is the very spatial logic of the ME which may allow it to do so. Here, the local and concrete dimension of the resistance to ME protests, insofar as they are spatially embedded within the material contradictions of urban development, may become global and universal, since it is the abstract and global form of the ME itself, as deterritorialised and transnational, that prolongs such resistance beyond its local boundaries, ‘bringing the local terrain of struggle to a national and international scale’ (quoted in Boycoff, 2011, p. 54). In other words, the telluric shock of the ME potentially brings about the possibility for a simultaneous localisation of global struggles and globalisation of local opposition—in the sense of Smith’s (2004) notion of scale bending —providing the chance to overcome the claustrophobic traps of localism, nimbyism, and piecemeal 20 For a comprehensive review of these works, see Powell and Marrero-Guillamón (2012); see also the film project Swandown, by film-maker Andrew Kotting and geographer Iain Sinclair, whose critical potential is explored by Stephens (2015).

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resistance, towards the collective production of ‘large backyards’ (quoted in della Porta, 2008, p. 42). This is, I argue, what occurred in the context of the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics. Here, the process of eventification has been violent, exclusionary, damaging, and unequal (e.g. Barbassa, 2016), making Rio de Janeiro a veritable ‘Capital of Disaster Capitalism’ (Winterbottom, 2016). Rio’s Olympic imagineering and its devastating effects have been contested by a long wave of turbulent protests that began in 2013 and was further cemented in the context of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. By no means the only instance, and yet a particularly interesting one for the present text, was in this context the activity of the Comitê Popular para a Copa do Mundo e a Olimpiada [CPCORJ]. In the build-up of the 2014 World Cup, in the major cities of Brazil, various Comitês Popular (popular committees) were formed, by gathering various instances of civil society (social movements, NGOs, associations) and constituting a national network, ANCOP (Popular Committees of the World Cup and Olympics), with the intention to monitor the world cup process and denounce its abuses (see ANCOP, 2014). After the World Cup all the committees dismantled but the one in Rio de Janeiro, the CPCORJ. The latter played a significant role as a real and virtual space of convergence of the various dimensions of the protest against the eventification of the city: social movements, NGOs, directly affected communities, journalists, researchers, activists, artists, and so on. The relevance of the CPCORJ vis-à-vis the present text rests in the peculiarity of its strategy, articulated on three intersecting dimensions (Burocco & Pavoni, 2016). First, research: a far-reaching activity of investigation that problematised the narrative monopoly of the Olympics and its consensual atmosphere by denouncing and addressing injustices, exploitation, and abuses, while at the same time framing these aspects within a more comprehensive analysis of neoliberal urbanisation and the centrality played by MEs in this process (e.g. CPCORJ, 2015). Second, support: both providing a platform for the local communities displaced, polluted, or in other ways negatively affected by the Olympic process, by organising encounters and providing space for them to express their claims and narrate their plight; and providing them with personal, legal, and emotional support. Third, communication: a strategic engagement with mass and social media, the continuous cultivation of a network of mutual exchange with ME-activists around the world, and various activities of reverse imagineering such as appropriation of narratives and symbols of the Games to repurpose their meaning and reframe their imaginary, via ‘promotional’

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material (leaflets, banners, stickers, t-shirts), performances, maps, exhibitions, and finally the organisation of a counter-event, the Exclusion Games (Jogos da Exclusão).21 This event, held in the centre of Rio from the 1st to the 5th of August, the day of the inauguration of the Olympics, comprised a vigil, various debates, talks, performances, exhibitions, and demonstrations, including more than 60 organisations, local communities, artists, researchers, activists, journalists, and passers-by. It gathered and magnified the scattered instances of anti-Olympic protest in the city into a common space to build knowledge, exchange testimonies, and unfold a common, eventful experience of resistance among the participants. Refusing to enter the ‘festival atmosphere’ of the event, and rather parasitically appropriating its aesthetics, this event gave voice to trace, visibilise, and magnify a multiplicity of hidden bodies, stories, and desires that lie buried beneath the Olympic brandscape, in this way provoking a tiny, and yet by no means insignificant, breach to the latter’s consensual atmosphere. § At some point in his discussion on the ‘uses and meanings’ of liminality, Thomassen argues ‘that there are degrees of liminality, and that the degree depends on the extent to which the liminal experience can be weighed against persisting structures’ (2009, p. 18). Let us continue. The split, which I referred to as the liminal disjunction of modernity, appears to be widened and multiplied to a remarkable extent by the ME, whose phenomenological hyper-experiences are systematically prevented (by the ideological, securitarian, and aesthetic apparatus) from being ‘weighed’ against the urban restructuring process, since radically disjointed from it. Yet, the turbulent deterritorialisation enacted by the ME and its ‘shock and awe’ mechanism also exposes this process to resistance. Elsewhere I proposed the notion of ‘resistant legacies’ as a way to trace the legacies emerging out of the frictions that the encounter between the ME and the urban space unleashes, and whose potential, impact, and outcomes normally remain invisible, since undetectable, to the gaze of ME literature, policy documents, and media reports (Pavoni, 2015).22 In the

21 The title Exclusion Games is a direct response to IOC president Thomas Bach’s declaration about Rio 2016 being the ‘most inclusive’ Games in history. The logo of this event shows the Olympic rings behind lines of barbed wire. 22 This is different from the notion of ‘shadow legacies’ proposed by Boycoff and Fussey (2014, p. 266) to capture less visible security legacies of London Olympics, that

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context of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics for instance, Boycoff and his interviewees argue that the opposition to the ME functioned as a ‘relational incubator for dissent’, reinforcing the ‘activist atmosphere’ of the city and establishing ‘greater interconnectedness’, ‘reinvigorate[ing] activist circles’, deepening the ‘sense of trust’ and ‘strengthening communities of resistance’ by providing activists with ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to soar over the hurdles that might have been present during “normal” political times’ (Boycoff, 2011, pp. 53, 77).23 Likewise, in Brazil the atmosphere of dissensus materialised by the various instances of resistance plunged the consensus for the Olympics to a historic low,24 and built a solid legacy of resistance and collaboration between different instances of the urban community (e.g. Zirin & Boycoff, 2016). It is perhaps at the global level, however, that this proved to be most effective. Let us qualify that the path that the protest in Brazil followed and intensified, which had been opened most notably by protests in Vancouver ’10 and London ’12, is of a different kind from the long tradition of protesting at Olympics and other sport events (e.g. Harvey, Horne, & Safay, 2013; Sadd, 2013). These protests, in fact, did not use the ME as stage to express other claims, but targeted directly the urbanisation of the ME and its pernicious effects on the city. This effort was globalised by the structure of the ME itself, whose abstract and deterritorialised dimension allowed resistance to be communicated and translated worldwide, ‘weighing’ the experience of urban populations against the abstract structure of the ME, to the point of critically reversing the Olympic consensus worldwide, as it is evident in the various cracks represented by cities like Hamburg, Boston, Oslo, Stockholm, and Cracow, which had to retire their Olympic bid for lack of popular support (e.g. Bull, 2016). Thinking about capitalist modernity as a mismatch between experience and abstraction prompts a reframing of the classic critique of ideology through which the ME discourse is deconstructed, and even a rethinking

is, the technical, strategic, normative, and knowledge outcomes of the in-games. Security experience that, although absent from bid documents, facilitate the tightening of a ‘repression-ready security state’. 23 Here Boycoff is quoting respectively David Eby, the Executive Director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Cecily Nicholson, coordinator of the Downtown Eastside Women’s centre, and Dave Diewert, from Streams of Justice. 24 e.g. http://datafolha.folha.uol.com.br/opiniaopublica/2016/07/1793176-rejeicaodobra-e-metade-dos-brasileiros-e-contra-olimpiada.shtml.

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of the practices of direct protest through which this is sought to be disrupted. It points to a critical approach to MEs that is situated at the intersection between phenomenological experience of those living in a site, and the spatio-temporal prolongations through which it is un-sited away (cf. Guattari, 2006 [1992]; Jameson, 1990; Srnicek, 2012; Toscano & Kinkle, 2015), and thus is articulated around a precise aesthetic-political question: neither the romantic attempt to restore an authentic experience of communitas against neoliberal eventification, nor simply the punctual critique of the ME ideology, but a strategy aimed at making both known and experienceable, and thus amenable to action, those elusive forces, diagrams, and rhythms that shape our being in the world: aimed, that is, to produce critical experiences to be ‘weighted’ against the structuring process.

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CHAPTER 9

‘Sit in the Shadows’: The Black Body as American Event Samuel B. Bernstein, Zachary T. Smith and Jeffrey Montez de Oca

On August 14, 2016 Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers remained seated during the national anthem and America remained silent. It would take another two weeks before Kaepernick’s silent protest became headline news across the country. The intense scrutiny that followed led Kaepernick to seek the advice of former NFL player and Green Beret Nate Boyer (Wagoner, 2016). Boyer had recently penned an open letter to Kaepernick expressing a complex and qualified position of support and willingness to “to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it” (Boyer, 2016). Upon reading this, Kaepernick and teammate Eric Reid met with Boyer to discuss the matter. During the course of their

S. B. Bernstein (B) · Z. T. Smith The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA e-mail: [email protected] Z. T. Smith e-mail: [email protected] J. Montez de Oca University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_9

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90-minute discussion, Reid suggested that in lieu of sitting, Kaepernick could kneel instead (Wagoner, 2016); Boyer saw this as a positive step: It’s still definitely a symbol. People take a knee to pray. In the military, we take a knee all the time. It’s one of the things we do. When we’re exhausted on patrol, they say take a knee and face out. So, we take a knee like that. We’ll take a knee as the classic symbol of respect in front of a brother’s grave site, a soldier on a knee. (Wagoner, 2016, n.p.)

Before the next game, Reid joined Kaepernick by taking a knee during the national anthem while Boyer stood next to them. Kaepernick’s decision to continue his protest against state violence in communities of colour by kneeling also attempts to honour the sacrifices made by American servicewomen and servicemen. Since then, Kaepernick’s call for the legitimation of the Black body within American society has sparked a multiplicity of reactions. In turn, he has received support while also attracting the ire of paternalistic nationalists who claim a patriotic position. Most notably, he became the figurative “whipping boy” for the entertainer who would soon become the President of the United States. Taking Kaepernick’s protesting body as our focal point, we use the lens of Critical Events Studies (CES) to understand the Black body as an American event. Critical Event Studies “attempts to introduce to events management the same kind of interdisciplinary, socio-cultural critical thinking that has transformed leisure studies” (Spracklen & Lamond, 2016). It is an attempt at recognizing the always already political nature of events, and the myriad ways that events are constructed as well as the material instantiations of these events: through time, memory, discourse, infrastructure, and management practice. As is evident throughout this volume, CES scholars have employed a range of research methods, including but not limited to: discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis, traditional and digital ethnographies, autoethnography, social network analysis, case study, and media analysis. We situate this chapter within Spracklen and Lamond’s (2016) “Protest as Events” frame, understanding the reflexive relationship between events as protest and protest as events. In this project, we attempt to critically consider the role of Kaepernick’s body in the construction of the unfolding events of what can be referred to as the “NFL protests”. We situate Kaepernick within the context of American civil and patriotic discourses, arguing that Kaepernick’s

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demand that America fulfils its patriotic promise and recognize that the Black Lives Matter movement exposed the liminal place of Black bodies in American sport, politics, and society (Brooks, 2006). However, we also aim to show how Kaepernick opens space for considering alternative patriotic discourses, such as those articulated by Black Lives Matter or Colin Kaepernick. This analysis builds on Farred’s (2007) work theorizing the body-asevent by understanding the body as “fundamentally conflictual in nature” (Pavoni & Citroni, 2016, p. 234), understanding it as a becoming (an always already and an also a not yet), and suggesting it as a possible site for future CES studies. In this, we pay particular attention to ontologies of becoming (Badiou, 1988/2007; Deleuze & Guattari, 2014), casting bodies in their unfolding as events—events captured, at times, in particular positions and moments—as well as always changing and moving. Farred’s work on Ron Artest and the “Malice at the Palace” exemplifies this spirit of CES. Farred (2007) wrote: the event… is that series of acts—or solitary act—that disrupts time through its historic salience… The event is indisputably temporal in that it operates within the normative clock, but it transforms our understanding of the pre- and post-situational moments. (p. 59)

To draw out the significance of Kaepernick’s kneeling body as an event, we deploy Badiou’s (1988/2007) three subjective response categories in order to create a typology for interrogating the popular civil discourses inscribed onto Kaepernick’s body. Our analysis looks at a range of public responses to Kaepernick’s kneeling body to chart the various faithful, reactionary, and obscure subject positions. These responses highlight one way that the Black body is subject to the authority of the (US) nation in the form of state-sanctioned violence, while at the same remaining deprived of the rights the nation provides its citizens. In this instance, people of colour are not imagined as part of the body politic. Black bodies are subject to Political power but deprived of political power, indicating an experience of American citizenry that is of a liminal kind. Through this analysis we show how excavating the embodied politics and looking at the reverberations at the nexus of the sport–nation complex allows us to see the affinities that work across the rhapsodic denigration of Colin Kaepernick’s [Black] body, and, turning to future analysis, the veneration of [White] bodies like Nate Boyer and Pittsburgh Steelers’ tackle Alejandro Villanueva.

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Sport, Politics, and the Unstable Ritual A number of scholars have built on Bellah’s (1967) landmark work on “civil religion” as a way to study sport in the United States (e.g., Forney, 2010; Higgs, 2015; Mathisen, 1992). Bellah (1967) defined a civil religion as a set of rituals, symbols, and beliefs that, collectively, become “a genuine vehicle of national religious self-understanding” (p. 12). Foley (1990) and Butterworth (2008) have applied the frame of civil religion to the sport of football, suggesting that it figures prominently into the symbolic economy of an imagined community of Americans. In this symbolic economy, the Super Bowl serves as a high holy day within American civil religion, and in which the ritual elements take on increased importance and are subject to increased scrutiny (Butterworth, 2008). The reverence bestowed upon Whitney Houston’s rendition of the national anthem and the moral panic induced following Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” performance illustrates the significance of the various Super Bowl rituals and their construction as either sacred or profane. However, while attention is often drawn to sensational moments, this may obscure the taken for granted importance of symbolic elements that appear to “simply exist” without need for interpretation or scrutiny. The performance of the national anthem is a central component of the sporting ritual, which is typically little to no cause for further inquiry. While poor performances become the source of mockery (e.g., Rosanne Barr) or redemption (e.g., Alvin Gentry aiding a young performer who had forgotten the words) its status as an integral part of the sporting performance has largely gone without question (Mosher, 2006).1

1 Similar statements can and have been made about the flag of the United States, arguably the most widely known and most venerated symbol in, and of, the United States (Hopkins, 1991). Though the meaning of the flag is assumed to be universal, it is not (Chan, 2017; Kertzer, 1988; Shanafelt, 2008). Marmo (2010) has shown how the flag discourse is bound up with power, specific versions of American history, and an imagined unified American body politic. The discourse around the flag thus operates as a “regime of truth” (Foucault, 1997) imbuing the flag with particularly powerful, dominant, and seemingly irrefutable qualities (Shanafelt, 2008). Thus, the significance of articulating Kaepernick’s kneeling body as a protest against the flag comes into view.

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Yet, the stability of ritual performances such as the anthem is not given; rather, they draw their power through the discreet operation. Their coherence depends upon actors who carry out the tacit script of the performance, which elicit and enforce the imagined self-understanding of the national body politic. The anthem ritual at sporting events in the United States has a history of contestation from both artists and athletes. Artists Jose Feliciano and Stevie Wonder have deviated from the norms of anthem performance, with Wonder performing the anthem from his knees while stating, “In the home of the United States, or the united people of America… [home of] not some but all. Feel me, feel me, Mr. President” (“Stevie Wonder,” 2017). Similarly, athletes such as John Carlos and Tommie Smith in the 1968 Olympics, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf in the NBA (Hartmann, 2003), and Toni Smith in 2003 at Manhattanville College have challenged the sacrality of the national anthem as an element of symbolic and ritual importance beyond reproach (Mosher, 2006). These protests call into question the assumed and accepted meaning of the anthem display preceding sporting events. Rather, they show that the “sacred” is never simply given, but rather always under construction (Durkheim, 1967; Morgan, 2017). The discourse that surrounds Colin Kaepernick’s initial (and subsequent) protests is an explicit explication of the instability of the ritual process and its place within broader systems of social, cultural, and political power. These events have served to destabilize sport as a unified “civil religion”, exposing the falsehood that sport and politics belong to separate realms (Zirin, 2007). Or perhaps more accurately it exposes the fact that there never was a unified “civil religion” in the first place, as Remillard (2011) and other scholars of American civil religion (e.g., Kent & Spickard, 1994) have argued. Athletes such as John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Colin Kaepernick, Toni Smith, and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf are not “protesting the anthem”. Rather, they are contesting the unchallenged but tacitly accepted national visions of apolitical sport, and a colourblind America that values and treats all citizens equally. The act of kneeling— traditionally an act of supplication—has become a particularly powerful instantiation of these truths. It reveals the degree to which sport is so thoroughly politicized that to deviate from this particular ritual through an act of bodily supplication can take on a seemingly more powerful and “contemptible” meaning than has historically been associated with Carlos and Smith’s raised fists.

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The Body and Truth: The Racial Politics of Sport To frame the conception of Kaepernick’s body, not simply his protest, as the event in question we begin with an Agambian take on Turner’s (1969) concept of liminality and conclude with Badiou’s (1988/2007) depiction of the event. These two theoretical perspectives are used in an effort to conceptualize Kaepernick’s embodied actions and the discursive responses to them, and to explicate the politics at work in the making of “events”. Liminality It is important to recall that Kaepernick’s inactive body constitutes the event. Kaepernick’s refusal to consent to the ritual process, through the unsanctioned act of kneeling, places his body in a liminal state. Victor (1967) built upon van Gennep’s (1975) tri-part model of a ritual interaction, conceiving of the liminal space of the ritual as that which is “betwixt and between”. But beyond the spatial metaphor that this concept invokes, liminality in the tradition of Giorgio Agamben (1998) also describes the fraught ambiguity that is experienced by a ritual subject in the midst of the ritual, at the threshold of moving from one subject position to the next. Often, this process occurs as part of a socializing project that moves the individual into a new subject role. In this regard, we can conceptualize the national anthem as a ritual act that symbolically renders the bodies’ performance as an acknowledgement of a particular subject place within society. To put it explicitly, it is an affirmation of citizenry deployed as a pregame sporting rite that ritually calls the imagined community of the nation state into being, situating all subjects in attendance—and even those in imagined attendance, watching via television—as faithful citizens. A performance such as Kaepernick’s destabilizes the ritual by refusing to follow the script. However, Kaepernick’s subject position becomes suspended in the moment of disruption, caught in the ambiguity of the liminal phase, unable to emerge from the ritual process by assuming the subject position of an acquiescent citizen. Significantly, when first questioned about his actions, Kaepernick responded by explicitly couching these actions as a response to the ongoing treatment of Black men by police. As Boyd (2003) has noted, the marginalization of people of colour and the disregard for the lives of

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young Black men by police officers has a long history in the United States (see also Atencio & Wright, 2008), and reflects America’s disturbing history of state-sanctioned violence committed against Black men and women (Brooks, 2006; Denzin, 2002; McCarthy, 1997). Scholars have explicated Agamben’s (1998) understanding of liminality by characterizing it as a “no man’s land” (Hokstad, Rødne, Braaten, Wellinger, & Shetelig, 2016) or as a labyrinth (TRANSark, 2015). These spatial metaphors illustrate the core of Agamben’s (1998) understanding of the liminal as a place of indeterminacy and indistinction, particularly as these subjective states are produced by power structures such as the legal system. Thomassen (2009) and Wilson (2002) have noted how liminality has been used to articulate positions of diversity. Stone (2012) also reflected on this, noting “liminality” as a major analytical theme in Black Atlantic studies scholarship that is used to understand the Black Atlantic experience. What is more, this liminal position can be understood as something that has been institutionalized (Thomassen, 2009) and has become a permanent part of social life in the United States (Szakolczai, 2000; Thomassen, 2009). The history of Black bodies in the United States has long been fraught with ambiguity, a history of marginalization and subjugation working to suspend the Black body in a liminal phase and prevent new and challenging truths—and subjects—from emerging. However, in using liminal language to highlight the Black experience in America, there are two dangers. First, that we might be content to have illuminated this experience and become complacent about challenging and dismantling the structures that produce them; and second, that we may “(inadvertently) reproduce[e] the knowledge that informed exploitative tendencies of cultural and capital production” (Stone, 2012, p. 821). Stone (2012) discusses this negative thrust of relying on Agamben’s interpretation, asking, “How has Agamben’s influence perhaps directed… away from more hopeful critical and creative interventions, and what are the stakes involved in emphasizing states of liminality and indistinction?” (p. 821). She concludes by issuing a call “for a redirection of attention from the effects of White power to the creative work of all who are vulnerable to it” (Stone, 2012, p. 821). Perhaps, then, Kaepernick’s refusal to stand—originating from his assertion that the bodies of Black Americans are not granted equal status, respect, or rights of White Americans—can be understood as one such “critical and creative intervention” (Stone, 2012, p. 821).

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Event Turner has been criticized as implying, but not demonstrating the macropolitical significance of the concept of liminality (Thomassen, 2009), despite his writings on theories of social drama. Defining the process of social drama, Turner (1975) describes four “acts” of the unfolding drama: breach, crisis, redressive action, and reintegration. Yet Turner’s process is a political idealization, much like his concept of communitas (for such a critique see Eade & Sallnow, 1991). The processes of redressive action and reintegration fail to account for the wide range of resulting subject positions that arise from such moments of breach, as well as the power dynamics involved in negotiating these positions. Turner writes, “If a social drama runs its full course, the outcome… may be either the restoration of peace and ‘normalcy’ among the participants or social recognition of irremediable breach or schism” (Turner, 1986, p. 39). In addition to taking Kaepernick’s kneeling body as a critical intervention—or a “breach” in Turner’s language—we can also describe it as an “event” in Badiou’s terms. For Badiou, an “event” is “something that brings to light a possibility that was invisible or even unthinkable. An event is not by itself the creation of a reality; it is the creation of a possibility, it opens up a possibility” (Badiou, 2010, p. 9). It is here that the “event” of Kaepernick’s body is born out. Beyond operating as only a “breach” moment, or even as an act of “crisis”, Kaepernick’s sittingcum-kneeling body is a proposition, “a local opening up of [a range of] political possibilities” (Badiou, 2010, p. 10). Of course, any of these possibilities are not given. Rather, they are subject to a process of being materialized— “grasped, elaborated, incorporated and set out in the world” (Badiou, 2010, p. 10). Badiou (2010, p. 10) refers to this as a “truth procedure”. He says, “the event creates a possibility but there, then, has to be an effort… for this possibility to become real”; that is, something “that sets down, not simply the law of the world, but its truth” (Badiou, 2010, p. 10). Badiou’s conception is overtly concerned with the political. He describes the power of the State as possessing “the monopoly of possibilities” (Badiou, 2010, p. 11). The State is: not simply what governs the real. It’s what pronounces that which is possible and impossible… The power in place doesn’t ask us to be convinced that it does everything well—moreover, there is always an opposition to say that it does everything very badly—but to be convinced that it’s the only thing possible. (p. 11)

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An event then—specifically a political event—is a new possibility that escapes the State’s monopoly of possibilities (ibid., p. 11). Badiou explicates this further: All of a sudden people, sometimes masses of people, start to think there is another possibility. They gather together to discuss it, they form new organizations. They may make some immense errors but that’s not the important point. They make the possibility opened up by the event come alive. (ibid., p. 11; emphasis ours)

To accept Kaepernick’s declaration that America does not treat all of its citizens equally, would be to recognize that an “event” has occurred, and a new truth has emerged. This new truth would lie in direct opposition to one of the primary tenets of the imagined American ideology. If we acknowledge that America has not fulfilled one of its central promises to a significant portion of its citizenry, it necessarily calls upon the individual to reflect upon their own experiences and question the degree to which their government has failed them. The Event and the Subject In his book Being and Event Badiou (1988/2007) describes three potential subject classes that the event may produce: the faithful, the reactionary, and the obscure. Simply stated, the faithful subject asserts that an event has occurred, and it has brought a new truth into existence by creating a situation where people must decide what type of subject they will be in light of the event and the new truth (Badiou, 1988/2007; Farred, 2014). Reactionary subjects fear the event’s ability to create a new truth and work to dispel its existence, which they do by asserting the event is worthless. A reactionary subject might adopt an almost militant belief in the original truth that has been challenged by the event (Badiou, 1988/2007). The obscure subject recognizes an event that marks a “new present” that has occurred and fetishizes the status quo by invoking an image of a better, more glorious past. Radically rejecting the new truth, the obscure subject uses this opportunity to redefine the present according to their own dogmatic views by rejecting change (Badiou, 1988/2007). Each of these three subject positions interacts with the new possibility that the event has opened up and they represent three different political

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responses to such possibilities. We articulate Kaepernick’s sitting/kneeling body as an event which marks the possibility for the emergence of a new truth and illustrates these three subject positions by examining public responses to Kaepernick’s kneeling body that represent each category of subject. In doing so, we situate Kaepernick’s Patriotic protest—along with the lineage of Black American athlete protestors—as a critical creative intervention (Stone, 2012) and a distinctly American event. In this way Kaepernick, like those Black athlete activists before him, imagines an alternative America where Black citizens are no longer characterized by a positionality of liminality. The Faithful Subject Following the initial wave of publicity over Kaepernick’s refusal to stand, many people stepped forth and faithfully defended his choice to protest during the national anthem. Consistently, his supporters argued that Kaepernick’s protest brought attention to a previously suppressed truth, that he sacrificed for the good of others, and that protest is patriotic. As Francis Maxwell stated in the Huffington Post, “Back in 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a stance when no athlete with his profile did. He knelt to protest the unjust killing of Black Americans by the police. He knelt to lend a voice to the voiceless when very few did… As a result, the topic of police brutality is now at the forefront of every single NFL game. Whether you agree with his protest or not, this issue has reached millions more Americans thanks to one man’s bravery. That is patriotic” (Maxwell, 2017). We can further discern different faithful positions. Older, AfricanAmerican activists placed Kaepernick and the other protesters within a lineage of Black (male) protesters who sacrificed in order to challenge the status quo of White supremacy. Former NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stated, “Ali’s sacrifice inspired me to boycott the 1968 Olympic basketball team to call attention to the rampant racial injustice of the time, which resulted in people calling me ‘un-American” (Abdul-Jabbar, 2015). Charles E. Cobb added that he realized in the 1960s that negative reactions from Whites indicate that their activism has triggered an event and created a difficult new truth, “Protest will always make someone uncomfortable, or governments uncomfortable. It is, however, the American way – a liberty for which blood has been shed at home and overseas. The civil rights movement of the 1960s, for example, was not only a struggle for

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civil rights, but for civil liberties – the right to speak and to engage in public protest” (Cobb, 2016). The White journalist Steve Chapman (2017) provided support for Cobb by citing a 1966 poll that asked “the demonstrations by Negroes on civil rights have helped more or hurt more in the advancement of Negro rights” and it found 85% of Whites stated the protests hurt more than helped. This led Chapman (2017) to conclude that Whites do not oppose the methods of Black activists, they oppose Black activists protesting White supremacy at all. These Black activists were enthused because they saw the event re-establishing a forgotten truth, the reality of White supremacy and the potential for brave young men to challenge it. Faithful subjects who are White tended to recognize the truth Kaepernick brought forth in the remove where Black bodies broke through their own racially privileged positions. Cleveland Browns player Seth DeValve (2017) recognized the truth when looking at his biracial son who will likely experience a very different racial reality than him or professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe who identified with the racism Kaepernick protested through her own experience of homophobia (Rapinoe, 2016). We can see former Green Beret and NFL player Nate Boyer as a convert who initially opposed Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the anthem (Boyer, 2016). In an open letter written to Kaepernick to vent his anger, Boyer recognized that ongoing racial inequalities contradict the nation’s values and that hurts everyone. In doing so, Boyer reveals other truths that had lain dormant within the discourse, “I also know that racism still exists in our country… I hate the third verse of our national anthem, but thankfully we don’t sing that verse anymore. I hate that at times I feel guilty for being White” (Boyer, 2016). Boyer’s reference to a racist verse reveals that music has been adapted for political purposes, especially in sport (Mosher, 2006). Boyer concludes his letter by inverting the key claim of reactionary subjects by arguing he did not serve in the military to silence protesters trying to improve the nation, “De Oppresso Liber (‘To Free the Oppressed’) is the Army Special Forces motto, and the reason I wanted to become a Green Beret. I didn’t enlist to fight for what we already have here; I did it because I wanted to fight for what those people didn’t have there: Freedom” (Boyer, 2016). These faithful White subjects have accepted the new truth and cannot return to their previous state of racial innocence.

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The Reactionary Subject Opponents of Kaepernick’s protest produced themselves as reactionary subjects by attempting to deny the truth that Kaepernick brought forth or they denied his right to claim that truth. These subjects felt harmed by Kaepernick for either disrespecting their kin, their nation and its symbols, or interfering with their consumer pleasure (Chaplin & Montez de Oca, 2018). Reactionary subjects tried to erase Kaepernick by ritualistically burning his jersey, organizing boycotts of NFL broadcasts and games, staging fundraisers for veterans, selling t-shirts with rifle scopes trained on Kaepernick’s image, and some police unions threatened to withhold security from NFL games. To deny the truth, they used three primary claims as a means to silence Kaepernick, “(1) Kaepernick has not been oppressed enough to speak, (2) Kaepernick is not Black enough to speak, and (3) Kaepernick is disrespecting America, its troops, and its flag” (Khan, 2017). As many faithful subjects pointed out, reactionary subjects went to great lengths to distract from the truth that Kaepernick revealed and avoid reckoning with it. Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren who came to prominence for an aggressive style of political commentary is an exemplar of this category. In a rant that went viral on the internet, Lahren shouted that the same First Amendment that protects his “right to be a whiny indulgent attention-seeking crybaby” also protects her “right to shred you [Kaepernick] for it” (“Tomi Lahren,” 2016). Lahren first charged Kaepernick with hypocrisy since he had the audacity to “blame White people” for racism when he received so many gifts from White people, such as the middle-class White family that adopted him. “For a racist and horrible country filled with racist and horrible White people that’s really something, isn’t it. Maybe you should also decline the paycheck from the White owner of your team or the White fans that buy your merchandise and fill the stands so (sic) watch you play” (“Tomi Lahren,” 2016). After denying Kaepernick’s right to speak, she then like many other reactionary subjects rejected his truth, “And Colin, who’s getting away with murder? I’d like to see some evidence to back that up because that’s a pretty strong claim” (“Tomi Lahren,” 2016). In fact, researchers have built a clear body of evidence that demonstrates the police carry out unequal violence in communities of colour (e.g., Brunson, 2007; Bui, Coates, & Matthay, 2018; Kent & Jacobs, 2014). Finally, Lahren rejected the truth that liberals and people of colour were even capable of serving the interests of

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racialized minorities, “Well, we’ve had a Black President for almost eight years now, maybe he failed you. We also have a Black woman in charge of the Justice Department, maybe she failed you too or you’re against the the (sic) liberals, your saviors which have run your communities into the ground” (“Tomi Lahren,” 2016). In her rant, Lahren recognizes that his protest has taken place but charges it does not reveal a new truth. Instead, she negated the truth brought forward by Kaepernick about social and economic disparities in the United States as well as the ongoing prevalence and acceptance (by many White Americans) of systematic racism and abuse. The Obscure Subject These commentators recognize that Kaepernick has created a new truth that challenges their preferred truth and so they draw on historical discourses to reinterpret and reject the new truth. By framing Kaepernick within their interpretation of history, they obscure the truth revealed by the protests and protect a status quo of White supremacy. Eric Macramalla demonstrates one line of attack in Forbes by claiming that unlike Muhammad Ali, Kaepernick is not a hero. “There is one key feature that distinguishes Ali from Kaepernick, and that is sacrifice. A hallmark of effective civil disobedience or protest is substantial sacrifice… His chosen symbolic gesture, however, is at best vague and ineffective as it has deflected attention away from the substance of the issue for which he was trying to raise awareness” (Macramalla, 2016). Macramalla seemingly agrees with the protests’ charge that racial oppression needs to be addressed, however he undermines the protests by rejecting a key claim of faithful subjects—Kaepernick has made significant sacrifices for the movement—which then allows him to make the reactionary claim that Kaepernick is protesting simply to get attention. Similarly, David French in the National Review acknowledges that the United States is torn by racial inequality and injustice. However, he argues that those material realities are secondary to the values and the idea of the nation, “You don’t have to love America’s injustices to fight for its ideals” (French, 2016). French then describes Sergeant Henry Johnson who was born in South Carolina at a time of de jure racism in 1897. Despite experiencing terrible oppression, Johnson still served the nation by fighting in the First World War. “In an era of rampant discrimination, he didn’t even receive a Purple Heart. Crippled by his many injuries, he couldn’t return

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to his prior employment, and he received no disability pay. He died broke and alone in 1929…” (French, 2016). French sees Johnson as courageous and heroic, unlike Kaepernick, because he patiently waited for the gift of racial progress from White America in the future rather than demanding it in the present. Thus, he sacrificed his own life for the good of White America rather than acting upon his own immediate, material interests. “You stand in respect for the blood of patriots, the men such as Johnson who made lives such as Kaepernick’s possible. But you also stand to pledge that you’ll take your place as a humble servant of our nation, striving to advance and embody the American idea” (French, 2016). Ultimately, French reinterprets the history of racial progress in the United States as resulting from racial obsequiousness and political quietude. The Last Word Despite shifting the method of his protest from sitting to kneeling, Kaepernick’s choice to adopt a position of supplication did little, if anything, to stem the tidal wave of vitriolic attacks from conservative commentators (Montez de Oca, 2017). The switch did increase support for Kaepernick’s protest among others, including US soldiers past and present (Wagoner, 2016). However, the dominant discourse positioned his act as an attack upon the “true” American heroes (e.g., service members), a disregard for American values, and a challenge to the symbolic representation and sociopolitical authenticity of American history (Montez de Oca, 2017). These initial attacks reinforced existing social ideologies by asserting a White historical framework of American history that denies the existence of contrarian discourses and preempts honest and open intellectual debate concerning representations of the flag, the nation, and the inequality and injustice that prompted the initial protest. By understanding Kaepernick’s protest in the context of American civil religions and state power, we characterized Kaepernick’s sitting/kneeling body as fraught with ambiguity and frozen in the liminal phase of the anthem ritual. Further, we employed liminality as an analytical tool which allowed us to understand the Black experience in America as one that is “neither/nor” (Wong, 2009). Yet, far from remaining a passive actor, we demonstrated—by tracing the subjective positions of public responses to Kaepernick’s inactive protesting body—how the emergence of new truths characterizes Kaepernick’s body as an event.

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In using Badiou’s (1988/2007) typology, we also showed the “conflictual nature” (Pavoni & Citroni, 2016) of Kaepernick’s body through the emergence of distinct subject positions, and the embodied politics at work in public responses to Kaepernick. While the Black body has occupied a liminal space in America (Brooks, 2006), Kaepernick and many others before him have used their bodies to exhort America to receive the truth that the Black body is American. Operating in response to Kaepernick, obscure and reactionary subjects such as Lahren and French work to preserve and affirm the State’s monopoly of possibilities. Ultimately, they see Kaepernick as a challenge to the sovereignty of the State (and the current state of White supremacy), and their responses seek to undermine or erase the emergence of the new truth. These subject responses are specific “racial projects” (Omi & Winant, 2015) that are used to delegitimize the rights and humanity of Black Americans. Or, put back in the language of liminality, the responses of obscure and reactionary subjects work on a racialized register to render Black citizens as indeterminate and, as indeterminate, also illegitimate. This is materially illustrated by Trevor Noah’s (2016) desire to know the “right way” for a Black American to protest, which is to say, to lay claim to a place within Lahren’s American image. The fact that Lahren cannot answer that question (the question of what is the “right way” for a Black American to protest) throughout the interview is an illustration of the Black experience in America as liminal; neither apart from nor a part of the American citizenry. The Black body is subject to the authority of the nation in the form of (American) state-sanctioned violence but is deprived of the rights the nation authorizes its (non-“American”) citizens. Placing Kaepernick in the lineage of Black American athlete protestors gives rise to a further truth: the truth of the Black (athlete) protesting body as a distinct form of American patriotism.

References Abdul-Jabbar, K. (2015, November 16). The importance of athlete activists. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/4114002/kareem-abdul-jabbarathlete-activists/. Accessed 26 March 2019. Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Soverign power and bare life (D. HellerRoazen, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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CHAPTER 10

Double Liminality: Fado Events and Tourism Geoff Holloway

Tourism and fado can be understood as two different, but interdependent, forms of liminality. This has particular consequences for the interactions and understandings between tourists and fadistas; and while both sets of actors in this ‘theatre’ or ‘performance’ are in the same location or liminoid space temporarily, they come from quite different social origins. Both sets of ‘actors’ are liminal beings in their own way. This chapter is an exploration of what this means in terms of fado and tourism.

The Tourists The liminal state is when the person (actor) shifts from their normal social roles to one that is transitory or temporary. In the case of the tourist they are in a foreign country where they have limited status as non-citizens of that country and they are expected to be there only temporarily before returning to their normal status back in their own country. As they are operating outside their normal structural location they can be regarded as potentially dangerous for the norms of the host country, so they are in a special category labelled as ‘tourist’.

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They are often physically separated from the mainstream host society and identified as a tourist by their mannerisms, social unease, and sense of awe in their unfamiliar surroundings, or that give-away symbol—the camera. They are often kept within certain areas of a city, e.g., Brasilia and Medellín have special areas set aside for tourist accommodation. Also, they often travel in groups (coaches, cruise liners) and are closely supervised by tour guides, etc. In Lisbon they even have tourist police, designed mainly to assist tourists and keep them out of trouble as they blunder their way through the social norms of the host country. Tourists are liminal beings by virtue of their status (or lack of) while operating temporarily in a transition state, or within the interstices of the normal structures of society. ‘The tourist is in a liminal period, in a state of existence which is out of space (often literally “abroad”), out of the normal, everyday social-structural and cultural environment and beyond its social and moral constraints, frequently between two states of work (not simply at leisure), and out of (structural) time’ (Nash, 1981, p. 468). There is nothing new about analysing tourists as liminal or more precisely, as being in liminoid spaces. In modern society liminoid phenomena tend to apply to particular groups, such as in the entertainment area, in liminoid spaces such as bars, clubs, and performance restaurants where declarations of loyalty and change of status do not necessarily apply (Turner, 1974). As pointed out by Cohen (1974) and Nash (1981) only some tourists undergo liminal experiences, that is, a change of status or sense of self, as some retain their home culture, habits, and principles. In other words, to use Csikszentmihalyi’s concept, they do not experience flow—which, with a different orientation, might allow them to reach a more authentic self or, at least, a greater appreciation of the host society and the performance. Flow is a very good descriptive term to apply to fado, especially the fadistas: Flow denotes the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement …we experience it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. 43)

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Fado Portugal itself could be described as liminal in that, despite its twentiethcentury economic and colonial power status: Portugal’s positioning on the margins of Europe, sharing borders only with Spain and the sea …as an explanation for feelings of isolation, marginality, and ‘backwardness’ in relation to the rest of Europe… Geographical marginality maps onto residual memories, practices, and the senses of place born from almost 50 years of exclusionary tactics – the isolationism wrought through practices of censorship, political repression, travel restrictions – and the current economic crisis. (Gray, 2011, p. 153)

Ironically, fado began some two hundred years ago in another liminal space—the brothels of Lisbon and the city’s socioeconomic margins. Also, and not discussed in detail here, there is often ambiguity between fadistas and the restaurants where they perform—often, for example, restaurateurs do not know who is performing on a particular night. This is not true for all fado restaurants, but for many of the smaller ones. Liminality can be applied also to the urban folk music of Portugal, fado, and singers of fado, fadistas, and the previous description of flow very much applies to them. However, when fadistas are together with tourists there are some formal rituals associated with the performance and the meeting of the two groups. Fado or more precisely fadistas, those who sing fado, are liminal beings as they operate temporarily and very intensely in a somewhat unique musical ‘theatre’. Fado can be transformative, not just for the fadista (discussed later) but also for the audience. The fadista’s task is to bring the tourist into his/her realm, which is enhanced by several factors. First, traditional fado is usually held in small venues (sometimes accommodating no more than twenty people), which helps emphasise intimacy, immediacy, and intensity. The fadista is not only very close to the audience but also sings at the same level, not on a raised platform. The fadista is singing to and for the audience, plus for reminisces of the past (saudade). The audience is requested to be completely silent during the performance. This is not just out of respect for the performance but it also to heightens the ‘drama’ of the fado and to enhances its sanctity. [This is even more so the case when fado is conducted in churches or cathedrals, which is quite often.]

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Dark/black clothing is associated with traditional fado. It is not used so much by fadistas today but the instrumentalists still tend to wear black. This not only heightens the dramatic effects but also tends to emphasise the fadista with the instrumentalists providing supporting backing. Mind you, the crossflow between instrumentalists and between instrumentalists and the fadista is integral to the performance and the interdependence of this relationship is often acknowledged with the fadista singing in line with the instrumentalists rather than in front of them. Fado lyrics cover a broad range of romantic themes, but usually relate to loss, unrequited love, death, saudade, the city of Lisbon and its neighbourhoods and fado itself, to mention just a few themes—telling poetic stories with an extraordinary emphasis on feeling. The objective is always to convey profound but common feelings—almost reifying those feelings to eternal or celestial levels. Sometimes, especially when only the instrumentalists are playing, there is almost a ‘competitive dialogue’ between them (Gray, 2013, p. 14)—this also occurs on occasion between the fadista and the instrumentalists. How many fadistas are there in Lisboa?—According to Neto, Pinto, and Muller (2017) there are about 500 fadistas in Lisboa. Although I queried twice about how this number was determined there has not been a response. Portal do Fado, which carries the latest fado releases and news, lists 96 artists. Portal do Fado also lists 33 fado houses and restaurants, which suggests that there are probably 200 artists or more, but 500 could be stretching it. Neto et al. (ibid.) also conducted a survey of 193 fadistas (100 females and 93 males) who live in Lisboa so there are at least 193, and the actual number of full-time and part-time fadistas remains undetermined. What motivates a person to become a fadista?—In their survey Neto et al. (2017, pp. 225–226) concluded that singing fado requires ‘a whole array of converging motives’, which are linked emotional needs— ‘searching for inner peace and harmony, enjoying pleasant experiences, and providing pleasure to other people) and creativity and originality in performance’—with the ultimate goal of achieving personal well-being, even to the extent that ‘performing was kind of therapy’. Many Lisboa fado musicians understand their fado to be deeply located within their sense of place, of community, of Portugal’s history, and place within the world and, most importantly, the relationships and romances that go with that. As Gray points out, ‘one feels how to sing’ (Gray, 2011, p.142). Fado could be called communicative connection as it is

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about connecting with the audience members as Mendonça points out, ‘In the fado houses of Lisbon, they say that a fadista is not only the person who sings or plays, but also the person who listens. This is a manifestation of fado’s communal spirit, an energy that has kept it vital for almost 200 years’ (Mendonça, 2018).

Fado and the Tourism There were 12.7 million foreign tourists who came to Portugal in 2017; 4.5 million of them visited Lisboa, which is a ratio of 9 tourists per citizen for that city—but in some parts of Lisboa, such as Alfama, the ratio may be double that. Over a period of twenty nights, sometimes going to three different fado places in a night, I conducted an informal survey, talking with tourists wherever I went. I also met at least twenty fadistas. The tourists I spoke to came from many different countries, including Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Uruguay, Ukraine, and the USA—with ages ranging from early twenties to late eighties. What was interesting about them was that the vast majority, about 90%, had never heard fado before and the night I met them had been their first experience of fado. They usually went to a fado performance simply because it had been recommended to them as something one does when in Lisboa—in other words, a standard tourism ritual when in Lisboa. Almost all of the people who went to fado restaurants were tourists, with one particular exception—Mascote da Atalaia, but more of that later. In a survey conducted of 31 fado places in Alfama, of the places that gave a percentage breakdown, Rodrigues (2016) found that 78% had 80% foreign tourists or more; one place had 60% and another place had 50% foreign tourists—almost all fado places in Alfama are very dependent on tourism. Also, 88% of all tourists had come to Alfama for the first time (Rodrigues, ibid.), validating the qualitative findings outlined above. The more important point is that tourists not only go to fado places as part of a tourism ritual but also they go as novices, not knowing what to expect, and they only go through the experience once. As so many of their customers are tourists it is clear that these restaurants are dependent on tourists who are there for the first time to experience fado and, being their first time in the survey conducted, they rarely make return visits. This is not to suggest that they do not like fado, but simply that their holiday schedules probably do not allow for repeat visits. As there

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are so many tourists in Lisboa, low return rates probably do not overly concern restaurant owners and managers; and the tourists tend to focus on certain areas such as Alfama. From random observations from cafés and restaurants in Alfama the ratio of tourists to citizens was about 20:1. Do local Portuguese people like fado? Well, hard to judge but again, using that well-known informal taxi-driver survey technique, I did not find any taxi drivers who liked fado. However, as Liana (2019) points out, ‘it’s a joke in the fado scene that taxi drivers hear a lot of fado and that Radio Amalia is the taxi drivers’ radio station’. More importantly, there are some people, usually from the senior generation, who love fado and are regular customers in places such as Mascote de Atalaia—here several true believers turn up almost every night (I could include myself in that category as I went to Mascote de Atalaia eight times over a couple of weeks). Notwithstanding the above, fado must have some broader appeal as it is featured on local and international television almost on a weekly basis and there are several fado-dedicated radio stations. Also, fado has been recognised since 2011 as Património Imaterial da Humanidade (UNESCO World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage). Fado and audience reaction varies—the tourist may not be aware of several informal rules. The first rule is total silence while the fadista is singing (unless invited to sing or clap along). Most tourists are happy to follow this rule but some continue to chatter or clunk cutlery as they eat during the performance. Usually the fado begins after everyone, or nearly everyone, has finished eating at least his or her main course. After reading a draft of this chapter Liana (2019) responded: I didn’t know the concept of liminality and as a fado singer I connect to both the concepts of flow and liminality. But for the liminality to happen simultaneously on both sides and to happen with the same intensity (which can indeed happen, and I have felt it many times and in many ways) chewing and palate sensory should get out of the way. So, there are rules governing interaction: rapt attention is desired, participative attention is not. Dancing is forbidden, even with some catchy tunes, though dancing was quite normal when fado originated two hundred years ago. (Holton, 2006, p. 7)

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The Fadistas ‘Fado’ means ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’, which is probably related (Ruiu, 2013) to the very high rate of Catholicism in Portugal—84% of the country is Catholic and 19% attend church regularly (Catholic Church in Portugal, 2018). Fado is a very intense, passionate, intimate experience, with songs covering ‘all the feelings of life’ (Mariza in Sydney Morning Herald, 2006). Fado is pure passion. It demands particularly strong, sensitive emotional, and singing skills of the fadista. The female to male ratio is approximately 50:50 in Lisboa, but in Coimbra only males sing fado. Fado covers a very wide age range, from the very young through to the senior (e.g., the very powerful singer Flora Silva). Fado is usually performed with one vocalist (female or male) but sometimes two, accompanied by one or two guitarristas (playing Portuguese guitar), a viola (6-string classical guitar), and sometimes with a viola baixo (acoustic base guitar) or a standup acoustic bass. The instrumentalists are almost always male, with Marta Pereira Da Costa being one of the few professional, female fado guitarristas in the world. Sometimes the musicians do not know who the fadista will be who will be singing when they turn up to play—so the instrumentalists are sometimes quite separate from the fadistas and often pursue independent careers. In other words, fadistas often do not have their own musical group but operate separately from their musical backing. Not having a common backing group is unlike most popular musical groups and is probably related to economic survival, which raises the next question: how does fado survive economically? According to Neto et al. (2017, p. 220) most fadistas live on low incomes and/or have other supporting jobs. Of course, this may not apply so much where they have permanent bookings in particular restaurants— such as Clube de Fado, D. Afonso o Gordo and Coração de Alfama—the last mentioned is managed by fadista Clara Sevivas. Some specialist places, such as Mascote da Atalaia, have different fadistas each day of the week and some of them only perform once a month with a maximum of twenty audience members. Fadistas can augment their income by selling their CDs after the performance. The top fado performers frequently perform in other parts of Europe, Russia, Brasil, and the USA—coincidentally, this also applies to Cabo Verde performers (which is another story). Some fadistas even perform

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in international music festivals as far away from Portugal as the Philippines (e.g., Cláudia Picado, 2018) and Australia (Cristina Branco, 2004; Mariza, 2006; Ana Moura, 2018). However, the top internationally recognised fadistas are a distinct minority, the vast majority of fadistas are happily trying to make a living from their local fado place on a regular few-nights-per-week basis. A typical fadista performance in a fado house or restaurant will last about 15 minutes, followed by a break and then a return, with two or three appearances in total over the night. It is usual to have at least two fadistas performing on any one night, so they interchange. This structure does not apply where fado is performed in a concert setting or festival (e.g., Caixa Alfama). So, there are at least four key parties operating in the fado situation: fadistas, accompanying instrumentalists, restaurant owners/managers plus the tourists (who are a transitory/liminal grouping). The interaction and expectations between these three parties are complex and not easy to decipher. However, there are separations between the fado/musical side of these tourism-related restaurants and the management of the same in most cases. This does not apply to fadista-owned establishments or where there are close connections between the fado and the food—and this division tends to apply in smaller or less well-known establishments. In the case of Mascote de Atalaia I would suggest that fado comes first, and the food comes second, that is, food is an intermission to the fado, not vice versa. If there are 500 fadistas in Lisboa (as claimed by Neto et al., 2017, p. 226) one could expect much inter-rivalry and competition—but the response I received to this question was ‘there are many more rock-n-roll singers’—which is probably true but that does not diminish competitive instincts. Many fadistas have managers, which must be another demand on their limited incomes. However, according to Gray (2013) there are two groupings of fadistas—those who identify as amateurs and those who identify as professionals, and they tend to mix in quite different networks. They also compete in terms of what each of them considers being ‘real fado’. Then there is a third grouping, made up of a few individuals who have become very successful international artists. As they have shown, it is necessary to expand beyond traditional fado in order to become internationally successful—e.g., Cristina Branco and Carminho. Also, there is one notable fadista (and jazz singer) who has demonstrated that not all fado has to be sad or forlorn, or saudade,

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but can be happy—Catarina Rocha, who lives in Viseu. Each fadista has her or his style of presentation; some deliver their expressiveness mainly through their voice (e.g., Catarina Rocha who has a soprano voice), while others express the fado through their voice, hands, and arms (e.g., Liana) or through their whole bodies (e.g., Joana Melo—the so-called ‘Janis Joplin of fado’). There is another style of fado that could be called ‘Celtic fado’—as sung by Maria Ana Bobone. Notwithstanding the above, fado has been increasing in popularity or demand over the past two decades—but is this demand related to increased tourism in Portugal (especially Lisboa) or other factors? This is a very difficult question to answer. However, it is clear that the Lisboa neighbourhoods of Bairro Alto and Alfama cater largely for the international market (Gray, 2013, p. 18). These neighbourhoods are also where fado originated and birthplaces of the fado legend (Gray, 2011, p. 147). The research conducted for this chapter is based largely on twenty nights in these two parts of Lisboa in 2018, potentially adding an internationally focussed bias, but also previous visits in 2014 and 2016. These areas were deliberately linked to international tourism in the 1950s by state cultural policy (Gray, 2011, p. 147, citing Nero, 2004). There is a slight anomaly here, within the liminal spaces of fado places. Fado is very intense and personal, demanding a great deal from the fadista, whereas the intensity and emotional investment on the part of the tourist is, if anything, very limited and temporary. It would require a before and after a survey of tourists to determine the depth to which fado actually affects tourists. The number of tourists coming to Portugal has increased two-and-a-half times (150%) over the past twenty years (World Bank, 2018). As Neto et al. (2017, pp. 219–220) point out, ‘Fado is like opening one’s heart in front of people who are physically very close from you. It is a physical experience as well as a musical experience. In involves a strong emotional commitment, which can be exhausting’. One famous fadista uses a very interesting technique—she frequently watches empathetic video-clips of animals and people that sensitise her feelings so that she can perform with maximum emotion each time that she performs (Cristiana Aguas). This dedication is not only amazing but it also shows how great are the emotional demands on fadistas, and how determined they are to give a performance from the soul, a fado soul— even if the tourists only have circumlocutory or cursory appreciation,

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especially as most of them do not understand Portuguese. Not knowing the language heightens the ambiguity—which is often an aspect of liminality. However, not knowing the language should not be a barrier to feeling the song, which some fadistas often point out to their audience (e.g., Filipa Carvalho) or explain what the song is about before singing. Much depends on the receptivity of the audience, which varies from night to night. As one fadista commented to me: When tourists come to Portugal they go to hear some fado just because it’s our tradition. But when they go to a house of fado they don’t expect to feel such a great experience. They say ‘I didn’t know Fado was such a deep feeling’ so beautiful…and so sad at the same time…but so cosy and warming…and they cry, even if they don’t understand the lyrics… and they get goosebumps. (Rocha, 2019)

Concluding Comments This chapter has been a preliminary examination of the liminal characteristics of fado and tourism and the connections/interactions between these two sets of quite different sets of actors. Victor Turner’s concept of liminality has been applied before to tourism, but never to fado to my knowledge. This then raises the question, how do quite different sets of liminal actors, fadistas, and tourists, interrelate within the same liminoid space? Further research would be needed to fully explore this question—which could involve surveys and/or semi-structured interviews of both sets of actors plus, most importantly, extended in situ participant observation of fado performances. As mentioned in this chapter, a potential limitation of the present observations could be the focus on the main fado tourism areas of Lisboa, Alfama, and Bairro Alto. In non-tourist fado places the interrelationships could be quite different. One of the other aspects of fado and interrelationships is that between the fadistas and the restaurateurs, which varies a great deal between fado places—but this issue has not been explored in this chapter to any extent. Finally, for fado itself, one suggestion for enhancing the fado/tourism experience is to ‘educate’ the tourists. Providing more explanation before

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each singing bracket about the forthcoming songs might assist in this process. Before each bracket, not before each song as I think that could interfere with the flow from the perspective of the fadista—once the fadista starts singing I think it is best not to break into their zone or liminal space. Acknowledgements I wish to thank all the people who provided comments on drafts of this chapter, including Meisha-Marika Lipsius (Switzerland), Melissa Burke (Tasmania), Isla MacGregor (Tasmania), Feligénio Medeiros (USA) and fadistas: Catarina Rocha, Cláudia Picado, Filipa Carvalho and Liana Fado (all from Portugal).

References Catholic Church in Portugal. (2018, December 22). Retrieved from https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_Portugal. Cohen, E. (1974). Who is a tourist? A conceptual clarification. Sociological Review, 22, 527–555. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety. Washington: JosseyBass Publishers. Gray, L. E. (2011). Fado’s City. Anthropology and Humanism, 36(2), 141–163. Gray, L. E. (2013). Fado resounding, affective politics and urban life. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Holton, K. (2006). Fado historiography: Old myths and new frontiers. Journal of Portuguese Cultural Studies, 0(Winter), 1–17. Liana Fado. (2019, January 15). Personal communication. Mendonça, D. (2018). An intimate fado afternoon in Atasca do Fado, at Rocco’s Italian Restaurant, Feel Portugal in the USA website. https:// feelportugal.com/2018/12/06/an-intimate-fado-afternoon-in-atascado-fado-at-roccos-italian-restaurant/?fbclid=IwAR2Om9esme8iRB7u41AqI2ELRYEAxJnDZ4bKCMeuB_hwfJCnvcU-dZ0ezk. Nash, D. (1981). Tourism as an anthropological subject. Current Anthropology, 22(5), 461–481. Neto, F., Pinto, M., & Muller, E. (2017). Becoming a singer of fado in Lisbon: An inventory of motives. In Advances in psychology research. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Rocha, C. (2019, January 4). Personal communication. Rodrigues, I. S. F. (2016). O fado e a valorização turística dos bairros lisboetas: estudo de caso no bairro de Alfama. Masters in Tourism thesis, Universidad de Lisboa.

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Ruiu, G. (2013). The origin of fatalistic tendencies: An empirical investigation. Economics & Sociology, 6(2), 103–125. https://doi.org/10.14254/2071789X.2013/6-2/10. Sydney Morning Herald. (2006, January 6). Retrieved from https://www.smh. com.au/entertainment/music/a-bridge-to-fado-20060107-gdmqep.html. Turner, V. (1974). Liminal to liminoid, in play, flow, and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. Rice Institute Pamphlet—Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92. http://hdl.handle.net/1911/63159. World Bank. (2018). International tourism, number of arrivals 1996– 2016. Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL? locations=PT.

PART III

Counterpoints

The Liminal and Liminoid in activism and dissent Though research into activism, social movements, and protest has a long, and well-established, body of research and scholarship, consideration of such activity has only recently drawn the interest of events researchers. In part, that shift is a result of the maturation of the field. It represents an evolution from a perspective dominated by an association with a narrow economic interpretation of impact (Musgrave, 2011) and a focus on operational aspects of event delivery (Bowdin et al., 2012), at the expense of considering the wider social, cultural, and political context surrounding events (Spracklen and Lamond, 2016). The emergence of critical event studies as a subfield within event studies and event management studies is part of that paradigm shift. The relationship between CES and an interest in events of dissent and protest, and their articulation and mediation, is a particularly close one, but why should that be so? In Chapter 1 we considered the contribution CES makes to its parent field, identifying both the problematisation of the referent of ‘event’ and an interest in exploring evental multiplicity and contestation at a spatial and temporal level. More particularly we highlighted the importance, to CES, of drawing on conceptualisations of time and space that intersect with the liminal. By bringing together a Badiouan construal of event as rupture and multiple (Badiou, 2006) with a Lefebvrean theatricality in the performativity associated with spatial rhythms (Lefebvre, 2004) and a Foucauldian conceptualisation of space as heterotopic (Foucault, 1986), where the spatial becomes a palimpsest of inscription, erasure, and fresh

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inscription (Huyssen, 2003), CES recognises events as essentially contested and disruptive. Although events of dissent, or as Donatella della Porta might refer to them—evental protests (della Porta, 2008), may be a relatively new topoi in the field of event studies and events research, it is apparent why such ‘events’ should be considered prototypical for the field. Formally, within event studies and event management, activism and protest have been considered as troublesome elements that required mitigation (Getz, 2016). However, they are now, increasingly, found to be domains of innovation; provocations that facilitate a capacity to think about events in different ways—spaces of otherness (heterotopia) where the oft-hidden contested relationships, discursive regimes of power, technologies of truth and forces of oppression and suppression come to the fore. Where the rupture of the ‘event’ facilitates an opportunity for the apprehension of a multiplicity of multiplicities, at an ontological and axiological level, that are made manifest rather than cloaked from view (Lamond, 2018). In this section the relationship between event, liminality and activism is explored from several perspectives; from state structured political participation in a reflection on the national elections in Italy, to the more unstructured, less ideologically driven, articulation of the protest scene Romania; from the representation of self and other in images of protest in the US, to the communicative and cultural function of the artistic manifestation of street art in the Egyptian uprisings of 2011—and beyond. The multiplicity that emerges from activist events, protest, and dissent, offer opportunities for the exploration and examination, as well as methodological innovation, around care of the self and of the other in the sense used by Foucault in some of his later lectures at the College de Frances (Foucault, 2010). Dissent in the liminal space of the city can become a parrhesial moment that enables the Real of the oppressed to be seen, giving voice to the subaltern (Gramsci, 2005). It is able, through that opening of the betwixt and between, to speak truth to power; contesting that which has been overwritten by revealing palimpsestial character of commodified and ideologically reproduced space. Through reclamation and reformulation, events of dissent confront the routines of the everyday by eventaly disrupting and exposing, that which would otherwise be hidden.

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References Badiou, A. (2006). Being and event. London: Continuum. Bowdin, G., Allen, J., O’Toole, W., Harris, R., & McDonnell, I. (2012). Events management (3rd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. della Porta, D. (2008). Eventful protests, global conflicts. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 17, 27–56. Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces (J. Miskowiec, Trans.). Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Foucault, M. (2010). The government of self and others: Lectures at the College de France: 1983–1983 (G. Burchell, Trans.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Getz, D. (2016). Event studies: Theory, research and policy for planned events. Abingdon: Routledge. Gramsci, A. (2005). Selections from the prison notebooks (G. N. Smith, Trans.). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Huyssen, A. (2003). Present pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lamond, I. R. (2018). The challenge of articulating human rights at an LGBT ‘mega-event’: A personal reflection on Sao Paulo Pride 2017. Leisure Studies, 37 (1), 36–48. Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life (S. Elden & G. Moore, Trans.). London: Continuum Musgrave, J. (2011). Moving towards responsible events management. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 3(3), 258–274. Spracklen, K., & Lamond, I. R. (2016). Critical event studies. Abingdon: Routledge.

CHAPTER 11

Liminality and Ritual Order: Italy’s National Elections of 2018 Sebastiano Citroni and Gianmarco Navarini

Liminality Inside and Outside Order There is an established tradition, common to various disciplines, which argues that the purpose of rituals—above all, but not only, in situations of instability (Goffman, 1967, 1983; Soeffner, 1997)—is to give order to our experience of the world.1 Some scholars use the word “order” as a feature of analytical perspectives: ways of making intelligible—and therefore giving order to—whatever phenomenon has been chosen as the object of research.2 Many others, starting with Durkheim and his 1 Soeffner emphasizes the instability of our existence in modern societies and the importance and complex nature of the rituals that counter this; Goffman’s focus is not on our social existence but on the social order of interactions, which is based on a precarious equilibrium that is usually re-established by ritual. 2 As many anthropologists, for example Holmberg (1989), have suggested, an order can be identified in various cultural phenomena, despite their apparently paradoxical nature.

S. Citroni (B) University of Insubria, Como, Italy e-mail: [email protected] G. Navarini University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_11

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identification of the process of symbolic reproduction (2001), refer to “order” as an actual property of the ritual phenomenon: something that characterizes both the form that ritual takes and the nature of what this creates. A further approach, not unrelated to the first two, was proposed by Foucault in The Order of Discourse: in this, “order” is analysed in terms of the “procedures”, or “discursive practices”, by which it is constituted, among which ritual plays a minor but significant part.3 Albert Bergesen, among others, has put forward a synthesis of these general approaches: The idea of a Ritual Order is proposed. It mediates between the social structure of the Social Order and the ideational structure of the Cultural Order. It is composed of three types of ritual practices; micro rites of linguistic behavior; meso rites of interpersonal interaction rituals; and macro rites of large-scale public ceremony. Each layer of ritual mediates problematical connecting points in the social system and partakes in the symbolic reproduction of social power. (p. 157)

Later in this chapter we discuss the Italian elections of 2018 and their context, specifically analyzing two of the types of practice indicated above. However, we argue that in some cases, including chains of events, the work of mediation between the social and the cultural order (Geertz, 1973), partaking “in the symbolic reproduction of social power”, is a process of communication and representation to which liminality can contribute, despite this usually being thought of as extraneous to the mediation of “problematical connecting points in the social system” (Bergesen, 1999, p. 157). In particular, on the basis that ritual is a phenomenon that involves rules and shared norms, we will be examining how this mediation operates at moments when liminality is characterized by the breaking of rules. Furthermore, we subscribe to the idea that public ritual processes (Turner, 1969), especially in periods when the frameworks of ritual order and liminality overlap, are one particular aspect of the public representation and experience of order: a ritual and symbolic order that is also a political order (Cohen, 1974), at least during 3 Providing a brief description of this order, Foucault says that ‘in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality’ (1981, p. 52).

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periods of perceived enduring crisis if not at other times as well.4 In other words, we agree with Bergesen’s definition of “the Ritual Order” as the complete range of practices “that produce ties of social membership and symbols to represent them” (1999, p. 161). Our main focus, however, is on the emergence of threshold zones of political discourse and practice that gradually move from the periphery to the “symbolic centre” (Shils, 1975), potentially subverting and changing the established rules, customary representations of the required qualities of leadership, and the symbols of social ties, such as representations of national cohesion and “the other”, that normally affect the reproduction of community power.5 From this discussion of the emergence of threshold zones, we move on to briefly highlight some theoretical aspects and historical moments that can help us to understand the clash between order and liminality. The most powerful representations of ritual order are usually identified as the “ritual of rulers” and “rituals of the state” (Goodin, 1978), by which both established and emergent political powers have always sought to reinforce their visibility (Foucault, 1977), or as a “mise en scène” that either elevates and places a power at the centre of order or confirms its position there (Balandier, 1992). The symbolic construction and occupation of this centre (Geertz, 1983), and then loyalty to it, appear to be indispensable to any power whose intention is to maintain the extent of its authority.6 In this light, both historical disputes over the location and occupation of the centre, for example in Tsarist Russia (Wortman, 1985), and various instances of political mobilization in the contemporary world can be examined as conflicts in which the main elements at stake are the codes whereby order and centre are interpreted and represented; the forms of action taken by liminal groups often present the most effective ways of challenging established codes (Rothenbuhler, 1988).7

4 A very interesting recent study on China’s economic culture (Herrmann-Pillath, 2018) supports the thesis that state and market have a ritual order even in periods when there is no crisis. 5 A similar analytical approach to threshold zones is used in Holtmann’s research (2012) on virtual leadership in “jihadist cyberspace”. 6 For key work in this field of analysis, see Warner (1962), Verba (1965), Shils (1975), Cannadine and Price (1992), Anderson (1991). 7 For examples of contemporary mobilization, see Melucci (1996), Beezley, English Martin, and French (1994), Bowie (1997).

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In many historical circumstances we can identify liminal phases, action, and events that have constituted the temporary antithesis of ritualized order. The particular “attributes of liminality” (Turner, 1969) derive from a range of phenomena: states of suspension of meaning and ordinary rules; phases of indeterminacy and deferral; borders and in-between spaces; situations of crisis and rupture; the sort of social relationship termed “communitas ”; and peripheral groups of marginal and often anonymous people. In sum, liminality is the quality of cultural codes, and sometimes organized practices, that are extraneous and opposed to order, the centre, and their manifestations in the political arena. The objects of earlier political rituals, for example in the Middle Ages (Bloch, 1973; Kantorowicz, 1997), had thus come under threat due to the incidence of liminal situations of risk, which undermined or ruptured order, and, in particular, because of the development of crises that threatened the integrity, continuity, and legitimacy of an established power. Edward Shils has summarized the views of scholars who contend that rituals (or “rites”) are part of a system of beliefs and expressive actions. A community performs rituals with reference to either a real threat or the perception of a crisis because in both these situations the execution of normal routines becomes difficult or impossible. In its normal course of development, any society can experience a “transitional crisis” that sooner or later involves a passage; for the crisis to be surmounted, this process of moving from one stage to another needs to be ritualized. These practices and exceptional states, which cut across ordinary life, are characterized by liminality. Rituals are thus part of a systematic response to crises, “actual and anticipated” (Shils, 1966, p. 447). Like religious rites and the most ancient forms of political ritual, many contemporary ritual processes—including “social dramas” (Turner, 1975)—are probably performed to cope with these “actual and anticipated” crises. This could also apply to “rites of consensus”, notably national elections and the pragmatic and ritualistic character of the discourse that usually pervades and frames them (Bennett, 1977). To sum up, liminality seems to appear in two principal ways: first, as a temporary subversion of ritual order or a period of crisis—including political scandal (Alexander, 1988; Thompson, 2000)—within a truly collective ritual process, involving the whole nation or community, that ultimately contributes to the restoration or renewal of order; second, in a sudden or unexpected event, action taken by an unknown or non-standard type of group, or the contesting of codes (Rothenbuhler, 1988), all located

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outside order, at the extreme edge of the zone designated as peripheral by the political centre, which it threatens or, as antistructure, comes into conflict with. When we come to examine media representation and the contemporary political language used to discuss liminality, and in particular to discuss states of suspension, the image of society in constant transition, the expected arrival of something not yet fully understood, the hoped-for conclusion of a passage, crises, and the subversion of codes and rules, it seems reasonable to conclude that liminality can coexist and overlap with the framework of ritual order.

Between Italy’s Two Republics: Liminality as Order The coexistence of liminality and social order can occur, we believe, when the constituent elements of liminality become more enduring elements of public action, of public and media discourse, and therefore of the public sphere. This is the case, we argue, for Italy’s transition from the “First” to the “Second Republic”, which began in the aftermath of the “Tangentopoli” corruption scandal (1992) and its related court proceedings.8 Two years later, the elections of 27–28 March 1994 for the Twelfth Legislature, called early, marked a decisive point in that transition. For the first time since 1948, Italians went to the polls in a new political environment: new parties, new leaders, and new alliances replaced the old system, the order, and “centre” that had been presumed immutable, which had collapsed under the weight of the scandal. The public and political scandal of Tangentopoli has been analysed as a “social drama” (Navarini, 2001). “Social dramas” were described by Turner (1986): Typically, they have four main phases of public action. These are: (I) Breach of regular norm-governed social relations; (2) Crisis, during which there is a tendency for the breach to widen. Each public crisis has what I now call liminal characteristics, since it is a threshold (limen) between more or less stable phases of the social process […]; (3) Redressive action ranging from […] critique of the events leading up to and composing the ‘crisis’ […]; 8 ‘Tangentopoli’ can be translated as ‘Bribesville’ or ‘Kickback City’.

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(4) The final phase consists either of the reintegration of the disturbed social group, or of the social recognition and legitimation of irreparable schism between the contesting parties. (p. 74)

As there is insufficient space here to describe the various steps of the scandal as a social drama, we will concentrate on the final phase. The Tangentopoli drama concluded with both a sort of “reintegration” (but only for one of the “disturbed social groups”: the Lega Nord [Northern League], which had only played a minor part in the corruption trial) and “the social recognition and legitimation of irreparable schism between the contesting parties” (ibid., p. 76). However, the schism was not between the parties involved in the drama and court trial but between the Centre-Right coalition that emerged victorious from the 1994 elections, dominated by the new political party Forza Italia, and the coalition of parties within the Centre-Left; in its support for one side or the other, the population divided accordingly. There was a moral as well as political element to the schism, whose ritual object was the magistrature: one side supported its attackers from the Centre-Right, while the other supported its defenders, the political opposition. In the Tangentopoli scandal, the magistrature, which had launched the pursuit of corrupt officials and politicians, represented the symbolic and moral centre of the national community. In other words, this dispute involved opposing representations of the judiciary, a manifestation of the state’s authority, which the Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi later accused of being infiltrated by “a communist war machine” (Navarini, 1999). This battle, partly fought with strategic use of the media, continued for several years, for reasons that included the numerous trials involving Berlusconi and his companies; during this time, governments were formed in turn by the Centre-Right (a coalition involving the Northern League) and the Centre-Left (a coalition with a social democratic orientation). During this period, the Northern League was at its peak in terms of self-representation as a carnivalesque and pseudo-liminal force: it organized spectacular public events, most notably the theatricalized demands for northern independence and the “invention of tradition” specified below. The enemies represented in these rituals included the state and all kinds of migrants: not only people from outside the European Union, but also “i terroni”, a derogatory term for people with origins in southern Italy. In the interpretation of the Northern League founder and erstwhile leader Umberto Bossi, the Po river separated the Italian North from

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the South. For Bossi, “Padania” was the symbolic representation of a territory rather than a precisely bounded geographical area; the Po river, an arbitrary line of separation, can thus be seen as a sacred limen. According to some scholars of media events and neo-populism, three types of public action by the Northern League had the most impact on the media: 1. A large gathering of militants and sympathizers at [the village of] Pontida, where representatives of the North Italian Communes swore to fight against Emperor Barbarossa in 1167. 2. The march on the Po for the symbolic proclamation of the independence of Padania 3. The creation of rituals and institutions that, on a symbolic level, mark the possibility of a new state—the organization of independent referenda and elections in northern Italian regions, and the creation of the “Green Shirts” and the “Padana Patrols”. (Mazzoleni, Stewart, & Horsfield, 2003, p. 90) This project and its concerns had a considerable impact not only on the media but also on the country’s institutions, to the extent that the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi re-established the Festival of the Italian Republic as an annual public holiday, from 2 June 2001 onwards, with celebrations in Rome that were even more impressive and solemn than those of the past. This response was heavy with symbolism, because Rome, in addition to being Italy’s capital and the seat of its parliament, was described in a well-known Northern League slogan as “the palace to demolish or invade”. It was also a response that embraced civic values and Italian unity, in that the reinvigoration of this public holiday, which had been side-lined since 1977 due to the economic crisis, once again gave Italians an opportunity to meet, both face to face and in celebration of shared values, perhaps reviving the basis of the social bonds that hold the whole nation together: the memory of the referendum that determined the birth of the Italian Republic. To conclude this brief picture, it should be noted that the Italian state described as the Second Republic was subsequently challenged by another force, the movement founded and led by the well-known comic actor Beppe Grillo. With his theatre performances and appearances on television, Grillo had already been a serious thorn in the side of the parties of

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the First Republic, accusing them of misdeeds and corruption; although satirical, these accusations cost him his presence on the state television network. Several years later, in 2007, Grillo’s performances emerged from the confines of theatre stages and thereafter gradually became established in the arena of the grassroots “politics of the piazza”. When compared to action taken by the Northern League, the ritual form and strategic approach of the events staged by the leader and comedian, which demonstrated an astute understanding of internet technology and social networks, were short on symbolism, and totally without masquerade, inventions of tradition, and proclamations that threatened the fragmentation of the Italian Republic. The political proposals of Grillo’s movement, which was initially referred to as “i grillini” and subsequently became the “Movimento 5 Stelle” (M5S: Five Star Movement), also differed radically from those of the Northern League. There were some similarities in behaviour in the movement’s first big public initiative(s) against the political establishment, the “V-Day” (short for “Vaffanculo [Fuck You] Day”), which made it extraordinarily popular. Obscenities apart, the language used by the comedian who was very well informed about Italy’s various problems and often raised issues such as globalization and green energy remained radically different from that of the Northern League (which he considered “a group of idiotic and ignorant barbarians”).9 The M5S expanded its web-based organizational structure and used online communication to exchange views and elect its representatives, thus moving on from V-Day to events that were more concerned with the construction of a political agenda. It became a more significant force in elections: in 2016, for example, two women standing for the M5S became the mayors of Turin and Rome. Not long after these successes, the movement declared itself ready to become one of the two major players in the “governo del cambiamento” (government of change), as it has been self-termed. The M5S was soon to declare the passage to the Third Republic.

9 This expression has been used several times by Grillo in his blog www. ilblogdellestelle.it. See also the newspapers Il Fatto Quotidiano, 10/12/2014 (www. ilfattoquotidiano.it), and Il Giornale, 17/03/2018 (www.ilgiornale.it).

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The Constant Renewal of Liminality: The Consolidation of Populism Up to this point we have focused on symbolic and ritual practices in order to introduce our proposed general approach. Hereafter, the emphasis will be at the level of discursive practices. In this regard, according to international observers such as the New York Times and the Financial Times, contemporary Italy has been an important “political laboratory”, especially because of the recent consolidation of its “populist” political forces. As has already been mentioned, this relates to a trend that has been developing for some years and was particularly evident in Italy’s national elections of 4 March 2018. We first discuss the results and the context in which people went to the polls; we then examine the efforts made by the emerging political parties to identify these elections as liminal events that have ushered in a new political era, thus emphasizing and exploiting for their own benefit the general conditions of uncertainty in which the parties operate. The elections of March 2018 saw, on the one hand, the decline of the Partito Democratico, the social democratic party of the Centre-Left that had developed from the fusion of the main Italian political traditions of the twentieth century and was therefore thought to have the most extensive and established local roots. After taking nearly 41 per cent of the votes in the European elections of 2014, the party only won 19 per cent four years later; this signalled a distinct crisis for the Centre-Left and forced its young leader to resign. On the other, two relatively new political forces made their mark. The Five Star Movement won 32 per cent of the vote: an extraordinary result for a party founded only nine years earlier, which had refused to locate itself on the traditional Right/Left axis and had embraced a range of populist positions. The second force that enjoyed success in the 2018 elections was the Lega. Formerly “Northern League”, the “Nord” (Northern) was abruptly removed from the party’s official name, for two main reasons. The first was symbolic and discursive, involving a sort of inversion ritual and geopolitical transposition: the party was now presenting itself as a friend of southern Italy (where it took many votes) in opposition to a “North” that this time was represented as Europe and, especially, Germany. The second reason was of a judicial and tax-related nature: the party had been accused of defrauding the state over election expenses, and with the court imminently expected to order confiscation of almost 49 million euro it needed a rapid change

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of business name to avoid financial collapse. The Lega, with 17 per cent, was at the forefront of a Centre-Right coalition that took 37 per cent of the vote. As mentioned previously, this party had emerged more than twenty-five years earlier, originally demanding independence for northern Italy from the rest of the country. After the exit of its founder, it has gradually become a right-wing nationalist force along the lines of France’s Front National under Marine Le Pen. Both M5S and the League have openly adopted populist positions, advocating, for example, the need to limit the flow of migrants and a new era of more generous domestic social policies, even if Italy’s international commitments regarding deficit limits and the return of public debt have to be revisited. These policy agendas were shared by various forces in other locations, including the United States, Britain, Austria, and the countries in the Visegrád Group, which have adopted a similar populist rhetoric based on the cleavage between the privileged elite and the people. However, it is not the nature of policy content promoted by the new political groupings that have made Italy a noteworthy laboratory, but the political forms that these actors have adopted: the ways in which they have established themselves in the public arena, and particularly how they interpret, operate, and redefine the rules and institutions of the political system whose centre they have now occupied. These issues are by no means of secondary importance, in view of the way that modern political systems are described as democratic on the basis of compliance with the established procedures and rules that govern their functioning (Urbinati, 2014). In this political laboratory, the emerging populist forces have presented themselves as new political subjects with the capacity to modernize systems and procedures, ascribing to their actions and initiatives a liminal nature whose intended function is to emphasize change and a break with the past. In regard to the Italian elections of 2018, this can be seen at two levels: in the events, statements, and discursive strategies that contributed to party campaigning prior to the elections; and in the process, starting with the election results, by which the first government of Italy’s Eighteenth Legislature came to be formed. Starting with the first phase, there were many events in the run-up to Italy’s national elections of 2018 whose representation underlined the liminal nature—involving the breaking or crisis of established codes and rules—of the way in which populist forces entered the political arena. It should be noted that the political climate in the period prior to the March

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elections was characterized overall by a growing wave of openly racist and xenophobic declarations and initiatives, which were at least in part directly promoted by, or attributable to, the new populist political forces. For example, the League’s candidate for the presidency of the Lombardy region said to his party’s radio station Radio Padania that “we have to make choices. We have to decide whether our ethnic group, our white race, our society should continue to exist, or whether it should be eliminated”. The offensiveness of this language ensured huge coverage for its exponent, well beyond the party radio station’s audience, thanks to the controversy and criticism that it elicited from the public and representatives of the European Union. The candidate’s declaration seemed to have been made in order to provoke just this sort of response and could therefore be attributed to the competitive dynamics typical of election campaigns, in which the important thing is to get talked about, never mind in what way. This was confirmed by the statements subsequently made by the same candidate, who seemed to be performing the customary about-turn by starting to talk about his declaration as a slip of the tongue. Shortly afterwards, however, things changed again: the candidate endorsed what he had first said by repeating the expression “white race” and justifying its use with the fact that “the Constitution is the first to say that races exist”. The Italian Constitution, which had its origins in the fall of the Fascist regime and states that anti-racism is one of the fundamental values of the Republic, was thus being used to justify the adoption of openly racist positions. A further episode of unabashed racism, which took place on Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2018, involved another elected official belonging to the League. The mayor of Gazzada Schianno, a small northern town, posted the following message, as a banner headline on a fuchsia background, on its Facebook page: “[a]s it’s the day of memory, remember to take it up the arse”. In this case, too, controversy ensued, but the mayor responded by unashamedly acknowledging her vulgar and offensive statement; she was not asked by her party leader either to resign or to formally distance herself from positions and behaviour that appeared inconsistent with the principles of the Italian Republic and the expectations of an elected mayor. During the same period, in the main square of Busto Arsizio, another northern town, members of the League’s local youth section burnt a puppet representing the President of the Chamber of Parliamentary Deputies Laura Boldrini, who had been subjected to repeated attacks over her statements in favour of the welcome given to

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migrants and in defence of minorities. In this case, the holder of Italy’s third most important public office was placed under direct attack, while the League’s national spokesperson (subsequently Minister for the Interior in the new government) described the event as “una sciocchezza” (foolish nonsense), provoking indignant reactions over the lack of strong condemnation for this gesture. The most serious episode, which occurred on a Saturday morning in Macerata, a small town in central Italy, saw a militant neo-fascist belonging to the League take his gun and, from his car, shoot at all the people of colour he came across, in revenge for the killing of a young woman in the nearby area, for which a young Nigerian man had been charged. Despite its seriousness, the significance of the incident was minimized by the populist political forces, who referred to the “gesture of a madman”; no one in authority went to the hospital to visit the victims of this racist attack, and there were isolated demonstrations across the country, promoted by far right groups, in support of its protagonist. At this point there was a clear risk that racist positions would be seen as permissible, but this did not lead to any reconsiderations of the stance of any of the political forces that were basing their identity on conflict with the values of openness, welcome, and the protection of human rights that underlie democratic constitutional systems. We now move on to the second phase under analysis: events in the three months between the elections of 4 March 2018 and the establishment of a new Italian government on 1 June. This was a period characterized by liminality in the form of an extended suspension of established practices, pervaded by perceptions of a global crisis as well as a political one. The promised transition took a long time to get under way; meanwhile, there was increasing uncertainty about Italy’s future, with government bonds losing their international competitiveness. There was a consensus in the national mass media that these eighty-seven days of political, institutional, and economic crisis represented the most significant crisis in Italian collective memory. Moreover, during this period the established procedures and practices seemed to be modified in at least three respects, which, rather than being glossed over, were emphasized in the mass media and online networks as symptoms of the advent of a new political era. First of all, in the Italian system the process of formation of a new government is presided over by the head of state. Prior to appointing the new government by issuing specific decrees, the president checks that

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there is a parliamentary majority sufficient to ensure confidence in the government and to support the action it takes. The expectation is that this process of verification takes place by means of a series of consultations at the Quirinale Palace, the president’s official residence, with the parties represented in parliament. These consultation procedures actually took place twice after the elections of March 2018 but completely failed to produce a result, while the informal meetings between the principal victorious parties resulted in the formation of a parliamentary majority. This would not in itself be a novelty, given that formal consultations by the president and informal exchanges between political parties generally proceed in parallel, with the former process supporting and ratifying the latter, rather than in conflict. The way in which the government was formed at the start of the Eighteenth Legislature of the Italian Republic was instead presented as unprecedented: media visibility was given to these meetings between the League and M5S parties and the expression “contratto di governo” (government pact) was coined to indicate their successful outcome, emphasizing the importance of agreements freely entered into by private parties engaging in mutual commitments. The second novelty, with respect to established institutional practice, was that the position of the prime minister, for the first time ever in the history of the Italian Republic, was entrusted by League and M5S to someone who neither held any elected office within them nor had been elected to a parliamentary seat. This figure did not represent anyone, and when he was introduced it was emphasized that he came from outside the political arena and was unknown to both the electoral body and the Italian public. Although this new head of government had clearly long been in contact with central figures within the new political forces, he played along with the way he was presented as new to politics, introducing himself at his first press conference as “a lawyer ready to put himself at the service of Italians”. In his opening speech to the Senate, presenting the government’s programme, he acknowledged both the populism that embodied the new government, expressing it in terms of “the ability of the ruling class to listen to the needs of the people”, and its “anti-system” nature, or rather its capacity “to introduce a new system, that will remove old privileges and the accumulated trappings of power”. The third novel element in the process of forming the new government openly broke with established practice, to the extent that it risked triggering a genuine institutional crisis. While the composition of the LeagueM5S’ government was being determined, one of the few restrictions set

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by the head of state in order to guarantee the pillars of the constitution, the inviolability of Italy’s membership of the single European currency, was ignored: an openly anti-euro Finance Minister was put forward. The President exercised his veto over the formation of this new government, refusing to accept the minister’s name. The presidential veto had been exercised before in comparable situations, albeit only three times; what was entirely new was the strength of the reaction to the President’s decision by the parties charged with forming a government. The two populist political forces responded to the President’s use of his veto by attempting to discredit him, publicly accusing him of “betraying the will of the voters”; they announced that he would be impeached, and invited people to take his picture down from the walls of state schools and other public locations. There was also an attempt to change the meaning of the Festival of the Republic, scheduled for a few days later: Italians were encouraged, by the leaders of League and M5S, to boycott events celebrating the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946, and to replace them with spontaneous occupations of town and city squares in the name of the “violated principle of popular sovereignty”, as repeatedly stated by the promoters of these protests. The attempt to give new meaning to this national celebration operated on a symbolic level and was part of a broader communication strategy that emphasized the context of ruptured normality in which the new political forces were working to create the new legislature and the “Third Republic”. It is important to highlight the way that the rupture of established practices in the public arena, which has been evident at the institutional level as well as in the statements and action of everyday political behaviour, is represented in the media. This can be seen in the way in which meaning has been attributed to individual episodes either before they happen, as with the anti-Festival of the Republic, or afterwards, as with the attempted massacre in Macerata, rather than through their actual occurrence, which becomes of secondary importance. The opposition to the populist forces has also focused on the communicative level, but its mode of protest and moral condemnation, rather than offering a fundamental challenge to the processes of attribution of meaning that the populist forces have promoted, has implicitly accepted these processes, thus validating them and increasing the attention they receive. The style that the emerging political forces have adopted, which ignores institutional ritual and flouts shared norms, has been emphasized on

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the symbolic level by their proud incorporation in their image of the challenge to tradition that had allowed them to develop. In the tempestuous period leading up to the final formation of the new populist government, on May 30, two days before the new government actually came into being, the League removed the big block-lettered slogan “Stop euro” from the external wall of its headquarters; the consequences of this gesture were as symbolic as they were real, moderating an image of excessive rupture and offering a more reassuring tone. In the political world, this episode drew no comment; it was reported in a short newspaper article without eliciting any particular reaction, not even from the opposition parties, which thus missed the opportunity to dissect the carefully calculated and cleverly constructed image of novelty and rupture that had accompanied the new forces into political life. At the same time, civic campaigning groups were organizing a protest event in Pontida, to be held on 12 June, with the title “Orgoglio terrone e antirazzista” (Southern and Anti-Racist Pride); this small town, governed by the League, was to close its gates as a result.

Conclusions Both in journalism and in political studies, the strength of the emergent populist groups has generally been attributed to the crumbling of the established model of political behaviour. Although this interpretation is to some extent correct, it tends to see the crisis of the traditional political model as independent from and prior to the growth of the new populist forces. In this chapter, we have stressed that these forces have had an active role in the crisis of the traditional model, a role that they have played by emphasizing their lack of respect for the rules of democratic systems. The new political actors have grown in strength in the wake of a political crisis and have made constant efforts to consolidate this as a general framework, from which they derive their legitimacy and force of attraction. In some cases, for example the events and episodes that we have analysed above, they have seemed very effective in operating procedures of the “order of discourse” and have been seeking to change the basis on which authority and leadership are represented. If Italy really has been a political laboratory, the main practical work within this seems to have been the development of techniques for breaking the rules; this work has been presented and legitimated as a new

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departure and the only way to put an end to an extended period of transition. However, it is perfectly obvious that since the early 1990s actors in Italian politics have shaped and sought legitimacy for events by affirming their discontinuity with the history and environment from which they have emerged, and by declaring them to be threshold events that are constantly moving Italian society towards decisive change and the beginning of an era rich in possibilities as new as they are vague. From the beginning of the 1990s onwards, after the defeat of the traditional order and the old centre, a number of diverse operations were presented as “new” and capable of replacing worn-out political forms and practices: the disavowal of Communist symbolism, the entry of the successful entrepreneur into politics, the establishment of an openly racist political force (the Northern League), and the enthusiastic embrace of the so-called “third way”. The “new”, however, is always tantalizingly out of reach; it can never arrive while there is no consensus about what it means and its desirability. The “new” simultaneously relates to the declaration of a crisis and describes its resolution. “New” is therefore used to describe an order that reproduces itself, but rather than promising stability incorporates the idea of instability both in its representation of how things are and in its self-representation: a pseudo-liminal order. Despite its frequent repetition, the proclamation of the “new” continues to have political success in the short term, but it may be increasingly hard to maintain this success by means of events that offer opportunities to experience liminality in social relationships such as Shils’ “crises” or Turner’s “social dramas” but without the rituals that resolve them; these opportunities are simply announced and never realized. If we go back to this chapter’s starting point, it would seem that a new ritual order is still to be formulated. Political parties, by means of recognized rituals or antiritual initiatives that counter established and accepted rules, order and institutions, genuinely wish to achieve things; from the obsessive attention that they have devoted to opinion polls (in a survey only two months after the elections, support for the League had apparently risen to 35 per cent of the voting public), it would seem that some of them are only interested in taking action that will boost their approval ratings. However, this kind of short-term popular support does not seem to lead to anything other than further elections, and thus to more promises of a new change, this time to be real. Returning to Durkheim, and his description of rites as the “rules of conduct that prescribe how man must conduct himself with sacred things”

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(2001, p. 40), we argue that people’s participation in public, political, and civil rituals demonstrates that they want these rituals to do rather more than function on the level of symbolism and representation: they want them to have a real effect on their lives and environment. Usually, they want rituals, and especially social dramas, to complete something that has already been started, which means “performing” it (Turner, 1986). However, it seems that we may have to wait a long time for a performance of this kind, with the capacity to bring people together on the basis of the shared humanity that lies beneath their diverse social relations and to transform this into a political project. While we wait, we can observe the perpetual conflict between liminality and ritual order.

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Foucault, M. (1981). The order of discourse. In R. J. C. Young (Ed.), Untying the text: A post-structuralist anthology (pp. 48–78). London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York, USA: Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1983). Centers, kings and charisma: Reflections on the symbolics of power. In C. Geertz (Ed.), Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (pp. 121–146). New York, USA: Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays in face to face behavior. New Brunswick, USA: Aldine Publishing. Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order: American sociological association, 1982 presidential address. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17. Goodin, R. E. (1978). Rites of rulers. The British Journal of Sociology, 29(3), 281–299. Herrmann-Pillath, C. (2018). China’s economic culture: The ritual order of state and markets. London, UK: Routledge. Holmberg, D. H. (1989). Order in paradox: Myth, ritual and exchange among Nepal’s Tamang. Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornel University Press. Holtmann, P. (2012). Virtual leadership: How New Jihadists guide each other in cyberspace. In R. Lohlker (Ed.), Approaches to the analysis of Jihadism: Online and offline (pp. 63–124). Goettingen, Austria: Vienna University Press. Kantorowicz, E. (1997 [1957]). The king’s two bodies: A study in mediaeval political theology. Cambridge, UK: Princeton University Press. Mazzoleni, G., Stewart, J., & Horsfield, B. (Eds.). (2003). The media and neopopulism: A contemporary comparative analysis. Westport, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group. Melucci, A. (1996). Challenging codes. Collective action in the information age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Navarini, G. (1999). Il congresso di Forza Italia: descrizione di una performance rituale [The Forza Italia Congress: Description of a ritual performance]. Rassegna Italiana Di Sociologia, 4, 531–566. Navarini, G. (2001). Le forme rituali della politica [The ritual forms of politics]. Roma-Bari, Italia: Laterza. Rothenbuhler, E. (1988). The liminal fight: Mass strikes as ritual and interpretation. In J. Alexander (Ed.), Durkheimian sociology: Cultural studies (pp. 66– 89). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shils, E. (1966). Ritual and crisis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 251(772), 447–450. Shils, E. (1975). Center and periphery: Essays in macrosociology. Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press. Soeffner, H. G. (1997). The order of rituals: The interpretation of everyday life. New Brunswick, USA: Transaction Publishers.

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Thompson, J. B. (2000). Political scandal: Power and visibility in the media age. Cambridge, USA: Polity Press. Turner, V. W. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Chicago, USA: Aldine Publishing. Turner, V. W. (1975). Dramas, fields, and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society. Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornell University Press. Turner, V. W. (1986). The anthropology of performance. New York, USA: PAJ Publications. Urbinati, N. (2014). Democracy disfigured: Opinion, truth and the people. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press. Verba, S. (1965). The kennedy assassination and the nature of political commitment. In B. S. Greenberg & E. B. Parker (Eds.), The kennedy assassination and the American public: Social communication in crisis. Stanford, USA: Stanford University Press. Warner, L. (1962). America life: Dream and reality. Chicago, USA: Chicago University Press. Wortman, R. (1985). Moscow and Petersburg: The problem of political center in Tsarist Russia, 1881–1914. In S. Wilentz (Ed.), Rites of power (pp. 244–272). Philadelphia, USA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

CHAPTER 12

Events of Dissent, Events of the Self The Liminality of Protest Images

Rasul A. Mowatt

The right to protest and dissent is question by oft times questioned by the general population and frequently contested by what we conceive of as the State across all known borders, regions, and nation-states. Besides the everyday affairs of community-based and nongovernmental organizations, events of protests are key activities that galvanize the causes of these organizations. And it is in those moments that the actors attending those events and members of those organizations are precariously illuminated. Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic National Convention recounted: …I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America? (Fannie Lou Hamer, cited online in Battaglia, 2017)

R. A. Mowatt (B) Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_12

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Fig. 12.1 “My Kind of Town”, taken during the protests to the 2012 NATO Summit that occurred in Chicago, Illinois. Photograph taken by James Watkins of Jim Watkins Photography (Permission given by the photographer)

But also, events of protest in an immediate fashion also illuminate the injustices of the era. Events of protest also reflect the bubbling dissent of masses that have yet to receive recourse of long-standing grievances. But events of protest may also reflect the conflicts of self with society and their inner alignment with forces of oppression within that society (see Fig. 12.1). In 2013, the emerging use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media reflected not only an outlet for immediate reaction to the wrongful death of Black people in state-sanctioned violence by an extraordinary number of Black users of Facebook and Twitter, it also reflected the budding civic activism tied to those wrongful deaths and resulting trials (Brock, 2012; Durham, 2015). The consistent chant of “Black Lives Matter” began to take the form of organized activities offline in public spaces as much as online in virtual spaces. Individuals personalized their reactions to Trayvon’s death and the deaths of others, “donned hoodies and shared ‘selfies’ with an occasional, accompanying caption: I am Trayvon” not only to raise awareness of the

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incident and the outcomes of the trial, but also to symbolically stand in solidarity with the deceased (Durham, 2015, p. 2). A movement emerged that articulated the anger and grief of the death of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio and Eric Garner in New York, New York in 2014, Walter Scott in Charleston, South Carolina and Sandra Bland in Waller County, TX in 2015 while also raising issue with past wrongful deaths of Rekia Boyd and Laquan McDonald in Chicago, IL in 2012 and 2014, respectively, among many others. As “Black Lives Matter” protests emerged, as well as other such protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline; the continued occupation of the Gaza Strip and the eventual recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the United States; the policies and actions of the National Football League (NFL) in the United States; the work of climate and environmental activists worldwide, in particular against eco-elitism in France; the response to various political campaigns, elections, and inaugurations; so has the use and posting of images in relationship to those protest events. In the wake of a tragedy or an injustice that is followed by a subsequent protest, solidarity “transcends temporal and spatial limits of a protest event, as well as limits of interactions with physically co-present participants” (Golova, 2015, p. 232). These protests are events that require us “not to see [them] as primarily personal or private responses, but as social reactions that answer to power, discipline, resistance, performance and the species desire for elevation” (Rojek, 2013, p. 17). These protests raise issues by creating personal and public awareness, by challenging institutional and state power, but also by establishing a collective identity around the notion of the disposability, value, and rendering of people as bodies and indigeneity as separable from land. The aim of this chapter is to interrogate and discuss the emergence of images at protest events in how they convey a liminal confluence of: digital narcissism (Kumkar, 2015; Lakshmi, 2015); memory work (Smit, Heinrich, & Broersma, 2017); civic “guerrilla” journalism (Koliska & Roberts, 2015); and surveillance (Browne, 2015; Raji, 2017). Within this interrogation and discussion, the emphasis is on how their use may represent the liminal space of transforming citizen to dissident, and how the events serve as our, as an audience, own liminality in understanding the issues that are being raised. Ultimately, the liminality of actors in dissent and protest, as well as the liminality of viewers of their images, opens the doorway for us to become unintended agents of repression, an exemplar of the prevalence of governmentality.

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Digital Narcissism: The Interchange of Liminality, Identity, and Protest As events make appeals to our inner desires, as spectators, attendees, eventual activist, according to Rojek (2013) we seek: (1) catharsis; (2) emotionalism; and/or (3) exhibitionism (pp. 19–20) (see Fig. 12.2). Further, Rojek stated that, “we are drawn to events based on how they are stateless solution, they are popular…[a] syndicated fraternity” (p. 104). We physically move with masses, while we are emotionally moved by an issue. But this does not preclude the possibility that we seek some form of affirmation from others and some type of acknowledgement of our decision to be moved. A 2016 The Daily Beast article entitled, “Protestors, You Better Dress for Success” in the Radical Chic section of the online news source warned protestors of “Black Lives Matter” that, “while we have long been a

Fig. 12.2 “Woman Taking Bonfire Selfie”, taken after the 2014 World Series. Photograph taken by Matthew Almon Roth. Image made available by Wikipedia Commons and the file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewalmonroth/15662218331/)

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nation of causes, times change and so do fashion, communications, and the messages that help promote a cause” as they [protestors] would do well to “study past movements to plan how to best present their causes and themselves to the public for success” (Mills, 2016). According to the author, the past movements chose their appearance with intentionality rather than for only fashion appeal. The black beret, the Kente cloth, the beads, the Danshiki, and the combat boots were each selected for their known meanings and expanded to further important meanings for members (Ogbar, 2004; Vargas, 2009). But should this modern focus on fashion not be disconcerting? The response to Black death, #BlackLivesMatter, is now a location to present and perform fashionably. A panel at SXSW 2017 on Black (Power) Fashion discussed how the fashion industry “is integrating unapologetic Blackness into runway collections and advertising” (Mosley, 2017). But such a discussion on fashion and dress can only be based on the evidence of a form of stylized protest—a “look” that emerges from the self-produced images at protest. As one searches for images tied to the protesting of contemporary issues that are of the protestors, spectator, or supporter who are present at the protest event, you begin to see a pattern emerge. The pose, the smiling faces, with the possibility of some adjoining text statement of being here or present on social media spaces of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat elicits a range of interpretations of what their representations may mean. Rojek (2013) noted that, “participation in events has become a mark of responsible citizenship”, a display that states who you are and what you aspire to be (p. vi), and the images that are produced, posted, and shared become evidential markers of that citizenship. But they may also detract from the actual event, and the gravity of why the issue has become a part of our social awareness. The issue and frequency of State-sanctioned violence requires one to take a stand and “show up”, but what is reflected in some images may be an example of an intentional or unintentional form of digital narcissism in a liminal state. If it won’t be online, then there is no need to be present in real life. In some cases, online activity can be a predictor of the “popularity” and responsiveness to social issues (Brunsting & Postmes, 2002). Digital sociality of online platforms steadily offers new and ever evolving ways for identity developing, identity making, and identity labour. In these digital spheres, the possibilities for the performance of self are limitless. However, these images do not provide a documentary of what

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is occurring, rather what is occurring at a singular moment. These selfproduced online selves are no longer bound by any sense of specificity in corporeality (Senft & Baym, 2015). Their lack of tangibility exists forever on the Internet and instruct others in their liminality rather than totality. The very materiality of online social media landscapes can deeply influence the building of one’s identity. The interactive nature of these platforms generates feedback and affirmation as content is intended to be both interactive and shared. This, on one hand, serves social causes, more specifically protestors, in developing a collective identity, on another; it also amplifies the politics inherent in visibility (DeLuca & Peeples, 2002). But once again, the visibility of what? The social issue or your presence in association with a trending topic? The nature of the protest event or your attendance at such event? As these images become profile or cover photos, they can be easily discarded and replaced with other images as one moves away from the salience of the event and issue, and even this process has become a scripted performance of the embodied self as an aesthetic (Witz, Warhurst, & Nickerson, 2003).

Memory Work: The Liminal Recapturing of Sense of Self But, do these images solely reside in the problematic space of digital narcissism? Digital narcissism represents one aspect of the liminality evidenced in images of protest events. But as an example of digital narcissism they also may show a fixed state of in-between-ness for many that are depicted, a depiction of performer rather than protestor (or activist). Is there another type of work that is occurring besides the performance of self, of the sole subject? According to Beech (2011), liminal identity work can be constituted in three ways: (1) experimentation—“in which the liminar constructs and projects an identity”; (2) reflection—“in which the liminar considers the views of others and questions the self”; and (3) recognition—“in [how] the liminar reacts to an identity that is projected onto them” (p. 290). Digital spaces allow for a certain type of memory work to occur through these forms of digital activism online. Smit et al. (2017) highlighted how the online platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat create spaces for collective bereavement and commemoration of the dead. This also can tangibly counter negative depictions of the deceased that have been promulgated by news outlets and nonsupporters. Additionally, these online spaces serve as an inventory

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of systemic violence and as archival of like-incidents. In this regards the past can be recalled as a searchable parameter or even as a feature in the platforms infrastructure (re: Facebook’s memories). These images become temporal representational stand-ins for state-sanctioned violence, forcible removal from indigenous lands, and other injustices (Gerbaudo, 2015). In the hands of activists, online images on various platforms reinforce the ethic and call of the social issue, while also serving as a historical marker and artefact of a specific event that has emphasized the actors (individuals) and actions of social organizations (the collective). Memory work, via image production, in protest and for social causes, “keep[s] a particular narrative [of the self] going” (Watson, 2009, p. 431). The identity of one’s self, the collective self of group-like actors, and the identity of the social issue, are imposed upon by external forces, and memory work serves as a counter aim, not for re-action or action against those same external forces but for the “members” of the social issue, the collective, and one’s evolving self. This last aspect is germane to our discussion in that people’s images that includes themselves, reflect how they underwent, or are in the process of undergoing, the triggering event of the protest (Beech, 2011). This triggering nature of the event, and the capturing of it as an image, reflects Turner’s (1984) notion of “liminality…[being] partly described as a stage of reflection” and possibly renewal (p. 105). In this way, the image is an exemplar of how Turner sees liminality as a way that the liminar (the poster, the actor, the activist) reflects on the nature of their society (the injustices), their sense of self (they could be the next victim), and their new identity of being an actor and not a spectator.

Civic Journalism: The Fixed and Liminal Representation of Social Issues for Action As mentioned in the preceding section, the memory work inherent in identity work can also work to counter impositions by external forces as much as serve the evolving needs of the individual along their path in activism (Gerbaudo, 2015). However, when it comes to counter external forces, the images can become a form of civic “guerrilla” journalism. In some ways, civic journalism encompasses the activities of everyday users of online social media platforms to record, document, and share instances of injustice or the protesting of it (see Fig. 12.3). The sharing features of online platforms, including the lack of character limits on Facebook

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Fig. 12.3 The poster reads: “I am because we are”. A picture of Rio de Janeiro’s city councilor Marielle Franco, 38, who was shot dead, is seen outside the city council chamber in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 15, 2018. Photograph: REUTERS/Pilar Olivares (Permission given by the photographer)

and Instagram, enable a form of live blogging an eyewitness commentary. This then can turn into modes of news spreading, as friends and followers share and re-gram the initial post and, depending on the content, the initial poster could be viewed as a reliable source of information and thereby accumulate more “followers”. But Goode (2009) warned us to not view civic journalism as being limited to online platforms (beginning, ending, or even involving online platforms). Just as we see the way in which civic engagement by-and-large still appears offline and content generation has increased online (Leung, 2009), we should be cautious in seeing online activism as the sole or more desired expression of dissent. And it is with this non-fixed nature that its relevance to a discussion with liminality is important. The image is no longer fixed in an online state, and no longer in the sole possession of the originator or initial image poster. An image can be taken via smartphone, but instead of posting the image online it is now used an artefact to share

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to only a close other in face-to-face encounters which is then accompanied by narrative or oral story. In those face-to-face encounters, the image is shown to emphasize or corroborate a point or incident. The aim is not public consumption without control; it is public or even private consumption with a purpose. Under this protected private viewing, activism and organizing can emerge to successfully counter the State, as was seen with the verdict of guilty for Officer Van Dyke in 16 charges of aggravated battery with a firearm (one for each shot fired) and the second-degree murder of Laquan McDonald (Rowley, Soohen, & Kalven, 2018). Alternatively, the image can be used on pamphlets, leaflets, or flyers especially when an activist has gone missing. In this way, the image has a greater likelihood of being used by social issue actors for the purposes of advancing the cause. In the event of a death and a subsequent protest, solidarity “transcends temporal and spatial limits of a protest event, as well as limits of interactions with physically co-present participants” (Golova, 2015, p. 232). These protests are events that require us “not to see [them] as primarily personal or private responses, but as social reactions that answer to power, discipline, resistance, performance and the species desire for elevation” (Rojek, 2013, p. 17). These protests raise issues, create awareness, and challenge power, but also establish a collective identity around the notion of the disposability, value, and rendering of a Black body. As we see the mothers and fathers of the various victims of state-sanctioned killings, vigilante killings, and in-group homicide, gather together and speak at various rallies, a new form of support system is created around the activism created by the Black Lives Matter “movement”, as an organization of loosely affiliated chapters or as proclamation taken up by the general populace that is outraged by a state-violence incident (Burke, Neimeyer, & McDevitt-Murphy, 2010). Mourning becomes less a testament to our vulnerability but a strident form of resistance to the very same structures that took the deceased’s life. The role of Black Lives Matter becomes a counter to a death and grieving group (Burke et al., 2010); as it challenges traditional forms of sharing loss with family and close friends. Black Lives Matter, again as an organization of loosely affiliated chapters or as a proclamation by others, becomes a community and space for communal shared loss when placed into a new context of justice; and that protest is a new form of coping that must be considered as an act of the reclamation of the dead.

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The “selfie” and the self-produced documentation of the event becomes a form of witnessing. And witnessing can be an act in two parts: “the passive one of seeing and the active one of saying. In passive witnessing an accidental audience observes the events of the world; in active witnessing one is a privileged possessor and producer of knowledge” (Peters, 2001, p. 709). And an accumulation of images from several individuals at the same event can create an accounting that “can produce remarkably divergent accounts” (p. 710). The image has no meaning in its liminality, and thus it must be rendered or mediated with narrative when it arrives at its intended destination and audience. Its liminality in content leaves itself open to continued usage and meanings for that cause.

Mass Surveillance: The Liminality of Being Surveilled and Surveilling Events “can serve as a useful chess piece in diplomacy and politics… [But can be appropriated to serve as] an instrument for measuring the health of the city, the region or the nation” (Rojek, 2013, p. 98). What types of events are allowed or repressed, especially those of protest and dissent, speaks as much to the actors of the event as well as the locations and spaces that they are held (and the authority over those spaces). Is protest and dissent seen as a right that the people possess, or are protest and dissent seen as a hindrance, nuisance, or even threat to the intended (and restricted) social order? If it is the latter, then the nature of liminality in the protest as an event, and the images that capture them may subjugate them to become useful tools in co-option, mainstreaming, and repression (Flynn & Mackay, 2018). The previous sections have hinted at, without directly discussing the ubiquity of camera-enabled smartphones that has allowed everyday citizenry. Everyday citizens as activists may have: (a) broadened their narcissism in digital spheres at the sake of the social causes they are aligning themselves with; (b) assisted their own memory work and identity work in their increasing awareness of themselves and the social causes that has triggered them to further action; and (c) served as a form civic journalism with expressed purposes of online and offline communication to promulgate and advance their position on social issues. All three aspects enable the active citizen to surveil and monitor the State and other nonsupportive institutions and actors as the mass culture of the internet begets mass surveillance. Singh (2017) commented, “citizens now possess the power

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to shed light on police practices in public space, providing the global community an opportunity to visualize the events as they unfold” (p. 676) (see Fig. 12.4). Some feel that the erection of a surveillance culture that is more in the manner of an omniopticon, the many watching the many, is the only way to ensure justice can be served for a State that is running amok (Mitrou, Kandias, Stavrou, & Gritzalis, 2014). Some have also dubbed this a form of inverse surveillance (surveillance of the surveillers) and prolepticon (the many or the few watching the police) (Singh, 2017). But Ramsay Orta, a friend of and the person who filmed the death of Eric Garner, believes his 2016 sentencing, on gun and drug charges, was retaliatory in nature, a consequence of his filming Eric’s death from asphyxiation from a police chokehold (Sanborn, 2018). The image can be used as an emancipatory tool for the activist opposing the imperial gaze (Browne, 2015), but it also opens the doorway as an effective tool for increasing their own surveillance by the State. One can be watched; one can watch the watching, and

Fig. 12.4 Mass Surveillance. Anonymous wall art. Attribution not known. Photograph taken by the author

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even one’s watching can be watched through the use of imagery in online social media platforms. Instead of the end of the panopticon, the faux justice of the omniopticon and the prolepticon, or even then corporate-sponsored synopticon (the few being watched by the many, of social media platforms), what may exist now is the post-panopticon (the surveillance of the surveillance apparatus; Kasra, 2017), banopticon (where surveillance is occurring with the explicit tasks of identifying individuals for punishment; Bigo, 2006), and possibly the nanopticon (where surveillance of the many is occurring from unknown locations and by unknown watchers; Vaidhyanathan, 2008). Browne (2015) elaborated that with new forms of media lead to new forms of surveillance. This “New surveillance” has 10 key characteristics, they begin (1) No Impediments—neither distance or physical barriers can inhibit being surveilled as chiefly shown through the use drone technology; (2) Multi-Use data—files can be compressed, coded, and retrieved within seconds while being stored indefinitely; (3) Undetectable—a functional TV remote control or laptop camera can also be a functional device for intelligence gathering; and (4) Data Collection—due to the functionality of most online social media platforms, features such tagging, facial recognition, and biometric reading can be stored for application use and use by a third party without consent. However, the creation of the images, as soon as it is brought online (through a cloud system for saving or uploaded onto a site) becomes jointly in the position of the initiator and the surveillant. Thus, Browne continued: (5) Predictive Prevention—pre-“crime” becomes far more important than crime; (6) Require No Personnel (or very little)—as data is stored, programs can be developed to alert based on certain meta-data hits or simply viewed later; (7) Contribution of Self-Surveillance–applications (location services) and hardware (fitness devices) provide input to servers; (8) Associative—appearance with key actors or at key events can become a meta-data point of guilt; and (9) Biometric Readability and Emotionality—with the each upgrade in technology, the ability to not only surveil and monitor but also differentiate information becomes increasingly more sophisticated with software that not only records voice but code the emotions of the voice. Many share Browne’s analysis and cautions, and they have caused many to be fearful of the passage of HR 1955/S1959 (US House of Representatives and Senate Bill), also now known as The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and its undertones

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of surveilling and criminalizing political activity. Then US Congressman Ron Paul went on record in 2007 as stating: This legislation will set up a new government bureaucracy to monitor and further study the as-yet undemonstrated pressing problem of homegrown terrorism and radicalization. It will no doubt prove to be another bureaucracy that artificially inflates problems so as to guarantee its future existence and funding. But it may do so at great further expense to our civil liberties. What disturbs me most about this legislation is that it leaves the door wide open for the broadest definition of what constitutes ‘radicalization.’ Could otherwise nonviolent anti-tax, anti-war, or anti-abortion groups fall under the watchful eye of this new government commission? Legislation such as this demands heavy-handed governmental action against American citizens where no crime has been committed. It is yet another attack on our Constitutionally protected civil liberties. (Ron Paul, cited online at Center for Constitutional Rights, 2007)

Browne (2015) concludes his characteristics of “New Surveillance” with, (10) Maximum Surveillance—with all of these, some have wondered if we reached such a point whereas it is impossible to not be surveilled. As Foucault (2008) postulated, the new age of technology is here (and has been here for some time), and the influx and control of digital information is just as important as the power dynamics that are tangibly constructed in real life. Knowledge acquisition is a field of social control, and citizens’ lives and deaths are bounded up, sorted, and utilized by the State (Bratich, Packer, & McCarthy, 2003; Foucault, 1990). All of society is surveilled, either by the State, by some other party, by peer or associate, or one’s self (by intent or happenstance). But for Foucault (1990), “it is not that life has been totally integrated into techniques that govern and administer it; it constantly escapes them” (Foucault, 1990, p. 143). Thus, the liminality of images, and our presence at the events associated with that image, make them markers of our engagement in a form of participatory surveillance, as we are engaging in a so-called participatory democracy.

Conclusion As these images, ironically capture in a fixed state, the liminality of events and the actors depicted within them, what about our own liminality and the issues that the events bring to light. The critiques of a US Act raised

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by Ron Paul (then US Representative for the State of Texas), one that threatens the very ability to dissent, to be at these events as an actor or spectator, and to be captured in the images of those events, cuts directly to an issue of rights (Center for Constitutional Rights, 2007). But specifically, a key question in this discussion is whether rights are natural or artificial? Are they a part of the natural order of life, and simply are placed into some form of text (such as the Constitution), or are they granted to us by a State? This question has been posed for well over two hundred years, as the various structures of governance have moved from sovereignty or supreme power to a bureaucracy or administration by officials. In this context, to live within the confines of a State, and be protected by that State, one must surrender some of their freedoms (rights) to that State to enjoy the realization out of others, to be placed in a form of liminality as a citizen. We have “chosen” to live within communities or some manner of cohesive unit for some time. There are great advantages in living in such communities, such as the sharing of knowledge and resources (think of: recommendations for doctors, auto repairs, finding a plumber) that far outweigh what could be gained on one’s own. These informal contacts gained through your citizen/neighbours become slowly replaced by official structures that at first aid you and your needs, but eventually circumvents those same needs. The knowledge of your citizen/neighbour is replaced by a Yellow Pages, Yelp!, or Angie’s List, or some other form crowd-sourcing site for feedback and review. The only people listed with the skills you need (auto repair, plumbing, etc.) are licensed, approved, or certified by some greater entity. The skilled person who is two blocks away, who will work with you at cost or lower, and who is flexible with their hours is not listed. This reveals a dishonesty about the “free” nature to search and find what you may need in virtual spaces. Content is very much curated by an external force for an undisclosed reason. These restrictions may protect us from unscrupulous persons and untrained labourers. But this also reveals a naiveté in our belief that the search serves you. But what if those needs go beyond the basic and personal? What if those needs are about the collective will to dissent injustices? During the 2011 Arab Spring, Fawaz Rashed’s famous tweet, “we use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world” showed both the sincerity in the moment and the innocence of co-option that followed (@FawazRashed, 2011). A call for a corrective measure to the way in

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which the State functions is necessary and articulates a form of deliberative democracy that legitimizes State representative that do the will of the People while also supporting the spirit of self-determination (Valdez, 2000). Protest and dissent are borne from injustices or a lack of justice that exist within a society. Justice, or the idea of it, comes from the social contract of fairness that people develop, as societies are formed and maintained (Young, 1990). As we coexist within some framework, society or nation-state, we expect an opportunity to have access to the same goods that others enjoy. Those goods have often been associated with those things that grant members of a society the ability to self-determine the types of lives they wish to live, accumulate wealth for familial prosperity, and other forms of social attainment. As we go about our lives learning, working, and producing, those goods should at least be in our grasp, much less in our hand. Those goods are what we consider to be the mechanisms to grant members of a society their independent ability to improve their quality of life as they define it, as they determine it. But, what happens when there is a breach in that ability to enjoy a fulfilling quality of life? What happens when there is a breach in the access to those goods? A functioning society then should have measures for its members to make an appeal to its structures, legislative, and judicial. Members of a society should have clear processes and procedures for making appeals, and representation within those structures should understand that among their many obligations in public service is to hear and assist in the process of appeal. For, as we began this discussion, it is important to re-enforce the notion that justice is a social contract that includes the idea of fairness, and at some point, within the bounds of systems of justice, we will all come forward with a complaint or an appeal. However, what happens when there is a breach in this notion of justice? Injustice, or the idea of it, is that breach in a society’s articulation of justice. Examples of that breach might be an absence of a clear process for making an appeal, or, the breach might be the process for making an appeal is laborious and exhaustive, therefore discouraging members of society to submit an appeal (Valdez, 2000). Another example might be the procedures are not articulated in a language that is understood by those submitting such an appeal. Or, another might be the timeframe for appeals does not correspond with the service of those obligated to represent society, thereby eliminating the ability for an appeal to be acted on. Even further, an example might be the will to listen to an appeal

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simply does not exist by those obligated to service. But, what happens if you are a member of society that seems to have never been able to access those same goods that others enjoy, that justice never existed? This is beyond the scope of injustice, as justice never occurred for it to not operate effectively for you, it never existed in order for it to be breached. This is the absence of justice (Young, 1990). Both injustice and the absence of justice calls forth the need for a populace to take matters into their own hands, the need for social justice. Social justice is the final breath of self-determination among a population when a society fails to create opportunities for self-determination to occur organically within its systems and structures (Hannum, 1990). The State creates, on our behalf, structures that should enable our needs and wants. But those communities and cohesive units develop an identity through those recommendations, sharing of knowledge and resources. As the community grows and expands, the identity of the State emerges. The State ought to create structures that enhance this cohesion. One such structure is government. The State only exists because of its systems of government, which is simply an executive administration that should oversee the ongoing social exchanges we have with each other as community members, and ourselves with the State identity. But what do we mean by “administration”? There are elected representatives, followed by appointed representatives, and then there are hired representatives. Each of these officials have varying roles and responsibilities ranging from setting policy on public school reform, and making sure that drinking water is regularly tested, to taking our picture for a driver license. In the US government is the White House, but it is also a trashcan on a city street. It is as much our real and imagined sense of Presidential elections and sitting in the Oval office, as much as it is the need to eat out of that trashcan when something in the balance of the social contract fails. Thus, “administration” begs the questions of function and operation. How does the government function? Does it operate the way it ought to or the way we need it to? Governmentality is not merely a catchy way to join the terms government and mentality. It is not simply a discussion of imposed social control by some regime. Governmentality is the mentality of rule. Governmentality is Google—the signing in, the location services of maps or online dating. Mapping and recommendation Apps become the subtle ways that cultural marginalization and racialization is reinforced. These platforms if seen as forms of social surveillance (where State and citizens both

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watch) work within three axes: power, hierarchy, and reciprocity (Marwick, 2012). While self-expression is evident, so too are social control and the normal power relationships and differentials tied to Race, class, and gender that are sustained and even expanded through these platforms and the content (including images) that we upload to them. They exacerbate some of the worse examples of how we see each other (see: Sketch Factor, and Red Zone) to become applications that perpetuate insular mindedness; a way to legitimate the cruelty on other communities, supporting the political values that have shaped and determined neighbourhood and, more importantly, they foster the seeds of protest and dissent that are ultimately sown. We are in the midst of the reawakening of the State, through coercive enterprise of surveillance and mediated social control (Harvey, 2004). Technology did not usher in the era of open borders and globalization as fantasized, but instead ushered in the greater need for the State to delineate those borders and our conduct within them. Returning to the 2011 Arab Spring, social media was used as a tactical tool for political rallying and organizing efforts but with extreme costs post-protests (Tudoroiu, 2014). The virtual “public” space of social media was used for information and image sharing, and the coalescing of protest actors around a common cause. But if social media is at best condoned by the State (and not at worse, ran through the State), then the social relationship that must be built to sustain the protest are fractured and never initiated on solid ground. The protest expression in the virtual “public” space cannot be a primary or preferred alternative to the physical and social expression in the real-life public space. It is in this alternative to real life that governmentality has a greater chance to take shape even in the minds of the protest actor. On one hand, governmentality is how government can produce the type of citizens that fulfil the established policies and practices that exist. Governmentality is (like) autocorrect. Not in the accurate editing of misspelled words or misused phrases, but in the editing of words that we are intentionally spelling one way but being told it is another. The very word governmentality has not been accepted or entered into any dictionary, and thus comes up as a misspelled word despite having a history since the late 1970s with Michel Foucault (1991). As if we do not know what we mean. As if we are obliged to serve our devices rather than them serving us. While on the other hand, it is how we govern ourselves based on those established policies and practices. Governmentality is (self/selfie) esteem.

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Esteem, the evaluative respect and admiration we apply to others, can be turned upon ourselves. Instead of looking like what you wish, it becomes you looking like what you hope that people wish of you. Instead of being an examination of the core of you, it becomes a perpetually outwardly displayed newsfeed of what you wish to promote. It becomes the “inspirational” and “introspective” meme that you inflict on others, a sort of tiny torture that we inflict on each. Governmentality is not simply the seats of traditional authority, but it is also our schools, health centres, public spaces, that direct our movement and thinking. And governmentality is our policing and offering to the state our liminal selves and the events of protest and dissent. Governmentality is (only) voting, because in our liminal engagement with the issue of the day, or the issues of our lives, that is all we have mustered to do/act. As we have been conditioned, and wilfully wanting to be conditioned by various candidates and outlets that have advocated for any of the candidates, we strip ourselves of supposed opportunities granted to us from the very initiation of this form of government. To vote is what we do, sometimes okay and sometimes poorly. But running for office? Never. Creating a campaign (around an issue, not a candidate)? Never. Becoming active in the issue that most affects us, or affects another in tangibly harmful ways? Never. To vote is the only thing we do, until the next time we get a chance to do it again. Voting reflects a consumptive culture, and voters are consumers casting their ballots of their concerns (Moraes, Shaw, & Carrigan, 2011). Society must be worked at, to be created. Free health care, requires work. Free college tuition, requires work. Changes in unemployment, requires work. Fair housing, requires work. Sustainable energy, requires work. It will take considerable work to educate and employ a population the way that grants them the ability to operate in such a society. Voting on the aforementioned government administrators (elected, appointed, and hired representatives), is not work. Watching them fail, be unproductive, or be marginally successful on TV, is not work. They all express the desire to govern, to dominate, and to ultimately oppress another. They all lead to small ways that can produce a sense of exerting your will on another. They are the beginning of how we vote and how we supervise others. They are the beginning of how we will take action not in collectively building a better world for us to live in, but for you, and only you, to be seen in. Our devices, our fitness, our mapping, and our voting are articulations of how we think about governing others and ourselves. The avenues and mechanisms that shape and sculpt

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our perceived choices, hidden aspirations, secret desires, pertinent needs, and preferred lifestyles are markers of governmentality. The police, the schools, the businesses, the sidewalks, and ourselves, are extensions of the State as each of these spaces achieves total information dominance for the State of its citizenry (Harcourt, 2018). But if all of those things are busy serving as a function of the State, who then comprises and serves the function of the People? Are the images of events of protest reflections of a new mediated culture that satisfies our hunger for digital narcissism? Are the images of events of protest reflections of a co-opted culture serving the State? Or, are the images of events in the form of memory work and civic journalism the seeds of a new culture of dissent trying to restructure society to be more just? (see Fig. 12.5). Until someone chooses to be the People, we are left with rules (and serving them) rather than rights (that should be protected). We are

Fig. 12.5 “No Justice, No Peace”, taken at the BtownJustice: Ferguson Action National Day of Resistance on December 13, 2014, Bloomington, Indiana. Photograph taken by Robert Charles Stoffer (Permission given by the photographer)

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left in a liminal state of being, as only subjects to the State and governmentality (Fanon, 2004). And in many ways, we have left our issues of injustice in the possession with that State, with only the remnants of its importance in the depicted liminality of an online posted photograph.

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Leung, L. (2009). User-generated content on the Internet: An examination of gratifications, civic engagement and psychological empowerment. New Media & Society, 11(8), 1327–1347. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1461444809341264. Marwick, A. E. (2012). The public domain: Surveillance in everyday life. Surveillance & Society, 9(4), 378–393. Retrieved from http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org. Mills, C. (2016, November 29). Protestors, you better dress for success. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/ 11/29/protesters-you-better-dress-for-success.html. Mitrou, L., Kandias, M., Stavrou, V., & Gritzalis, D. (2014). Social media profiling: A panopticon or omniopticon tool? In Proceedings of the 6th Conference of the Surveillance Studies Network. Barcelona, Spain. Moraes, C., Shaw, D., & Carrigan, M. (2011). Purchase power: An examination of consumption as voting. Journal of Marketing Management, 27 (9–10), 1059–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2011.565726. Mosley, R. (2017, February 8). Preview: Black (Power) fashion. SXTX State. Retrieved from http://sxtxstate.com/2017/02/preview-black-powerfashion/. Ogbar, J. (2004). Black power: Radical politics and African American identity. Baltimore, MA: The John Hopkins University Press. Peters, J. D. (2001). Witnessing. Media, Culture and Society, 23(6), 707–723. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344301023006002. Raji, S. (2017). My face is not for public consumption: Selfies, surveillance and the politics of being unseen. In A. Kuntsman (Ed.), Selfie citizenship (pp. 149– 158). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-3-319-45270-8_16. Rojek, C. (2013). Event power: How global events manage and manipulate. London: Sage. Rowley, R. (Director), Soohen, J., & Kalven, J. (Producers). (2018, May). The blue wall. Los Angeles, CA: International Documentary Association. Sanborn, J. (2018). The witness: One year after filming Eric Garner’s fatal confrontation with police, Ramsey Orta’s life has been upended. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/ramsey-orta-eric-garner-video/. Senft, T. M., & Baym, N. K. (2015). What does the selfie say? Investigating a global phenomenon. International Journal of Communication, 9, 1588–1606. Singh, A. (2017). Prolepticon: Anticipatory citizen surveillance of the police. Surveillance & Society, 15(5), 676–688. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v15i5. 6418. Smit, R., Heinrich, A., & Broersma, M. (2017). Activating the past in the Ferguson protests: Memory work, digital activism and the politics of platforms. New Media & Society, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817741849.

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CHAPTER 13

Liminality and Activism: Conceptualising Unconventional Political Participation in Romania Ruxandra Gubernat and Henry P. Rammelt

Introduction Students of contemporary activism, notably working on Eastern Europe, witness strong changes in the forms it takes and modifications in the way individuals engage in it. In recent years, one can observe a shift towards forms of activism that require, amongst other things, less commitment; that often rely on campaigning on social media platforms and that can be influenced by faster disengagement. This trend is not solely affecting Eastern European societies but also societies from the Western part of

R. Gubernat Universite Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France e-mail: [email protected] H. P. Rammelt (B) National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected]

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Europe, where patterns of social and political engagement are changing, and activism is becoming a form of “serious leisure” (Lamond & Spracklen, 2015). If we are to observe the appearance of yet another type of activism, situated in-between classic forms of activism and political passivity, we need to focus our attention on the transition processes fostering involvement. Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans (2013, p. 895) described the gradual development from a politically interested citizen to one that becomes active in unconventional political participation through four consecutive steps, passing from sympathiser to an active participant. It seems we can understand this transition involving a secondary socialisation in which participants need to adapt to the rules, and to act in accordance to certain roles (Fillieule & Pudal, 2010), as liminal stages in the passage from non-involved individuals to politically active ones. Romania is a country that witnessed high levels of industrial conflict and relatively strong mobilisations by labour unions throughout the 1990s (Varga & Freyberg-Inan, 2015), but only a few mass-protests in the years that followed. In such a scenario, the series of mass-protests that started in the winter of 2011/12 with protests against austerity measures, point to a transition from an apathetic political culture to one in which protests, and civic involvement become an important part of politics for broad segments of the Romanian society. Protests became more frequent and participant numbers grew constantly over this period; they involved an environmental campaign against the exploitation of a gold mine in Ros, ia Montan˘a that spurred mass-protests in late 2013; anti-corruption protests that followed a fire in the alternative venue Colectiv in 2015; anti-corruption and anti-government protests that started in January 2017 (against the government decree OUG13) and that continued, with fluctuating intensity, until the present moment. Further, we can observe an evolution regarding mobilisation efforts. Until 2013 they were mainly based on mobilising networks consisting of activists and the constituency concerned by a certain policy decision (such as local landowners in the case of Ros, ia Montan˘a). However, since then, more fluid forms of mobilisation have followed, involving, or even relying, on online mobilisation, notably Facebook. In order to understand this paradigm shift in the past seven years in Romania and the neighbouring countries, regarding protest participation, we argue that a more processual approach is needed, focusing particularly on the transition state of participants rather than on structural shifts. The concept of “liminality” allows us to analyse the appearance of social

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phenomena that cannot be resolved by classical structuration theory (Thomassen, 2009). For our analysis of changing patterns of (unconventional) political participation in Romania we will use Turner’s understanding of liminality, as an in-between status during rites of passage (Turner, 1967, pp. 93–111), as the starting point. Turner conceptualises liminality for societies that undergo social and cultural transitions, through the “ambiguous and indeterminate attributes” (Turner, 1969, p. 95) of liminal entities, not clearly positioned in the matrix of “law, custom, convention and ceremonial”, but rather in a continuous process of differentiation. Such an approach enables us to better comprehend the ambiguous state in which protest participants or “initiates” need to position themselves during their development or passage from citizens to activists. A passage in which participants will gradually adapt to new rules, assume new roles and integrate in new social networks, while still not being fully immersed in the new environment. If we are to look at the emergent character of protests and understand the latter as producers of social capital, collective identity, and knowledge (della Porta, 2008, p. 30), shared experiences of protest participants can lead to what Turner (1974) called communitas. Rammelt (2018) evaluated the influence of protest participation on future protests in Romania in terms of the accumulation of social capital and experience. While such an approach is appropriate to assess potential effects of participation on the participants, the liminality approach allows for an analysis of participants’ positioning during the aforementioned passage from citizen to activist. This approach has successfully been applied to gain new insights in processes of mobilisation and protesting, especially when occupations of spaces took place, such as the Maidan and the Gezi Park protests. Demirhisar (2017) demonstrated how the ritualisation of protests practices created liminal situations during the Gezi Park protests. Georgsen and Thomassen (2017) showed how the liminal character of the Maidan protests and participants’ ritualised actions generated communitas. Other authors focused more on the “in-betweenness” character of the Egyptian Revolution (Bseiso, in this volume) or on the use of selfies in the liminal space emerging during #BlackLivesMatter protests for transforming citizens to dissidents (Mowatt, in this volume). For Eastern Europe, this approach seems to be even more adequate as citizens in the societies of this region are confronted, for almost 30 years, with macro-societal passages, involving changes in the economic, political, and cultural configurations of society. This passage, for a long time called

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“democratic transition”, by enthusiasts, neither reached its final stage nor what has been referred to as the stage of “democratic consolidation”. Our hypothesis is that the signifier of the space occupied by recent protests in Romania, and potentially elsewhere in the region, creates a transitional space, between engagement and social detachment. This transition, from non-involved individuals to involved citizens, can take place in liminal spaces; e.g. as spaces in which individuals attribute meaning to their actions. We believe that a lasting social change could occur through the regularity with which people access these spaces of representation of their mobilisation actions. Affiliation to such liminal spaces and participation in protests and social movements cultivate, then, shared experiences and generate countercultural communes, resulting in spontaneous communitas (Turner, 1969, pp. 94–130). We thus identify three main types of liminal space that we hold accountable for the aforementioned transition: (1) the scene; (2) eventful protests; and (3) social media activism.

Post-1989: Eastern Europe and Liminality The regime changes in Eastern Europe provoked a (almost permanent) liminal situation; one situated in-between a new set of rules and an older order, without any resolution being attained. Even if the regime change had created, at least temporarily, a new set of rules and new conditions favourable to civic and political participation, citizens would still need to make experiences that made use of this new environment. The links between citizen involvement in newly democratic countries and values, considered to be tantamount for democratic consolidation, have been widely discussed (Croissant & Lauth, 2000; Diamond, 1999, p. 161ff.; Merkel, 1998). Notably, for Romania, it has been observed that the configurations of the regime change did not correspond to the benchmark of promising transitions, especially in what concerns the chances of consolidation on the level of citizens (Gabanyi, 1990; Linz & Stepan, 1996, p. 358). Furthermore, in absence of the proclaimed democratic consolidation, convergent with the promises of Western liberalism, political systems in the region, notably the countries of the Visegrád group, Romania and the Balkan countries, transitioned away (Tomini, 2018) from their expected destination, towards forms of illiberal democracy (Rupnik, 2018). Countries in Eastern Europe experience continuing regime change; liminal situations, where one system of values seems to

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be transformed into another and then into the next without reaching the consolidation of a normative order, occur. In this regard we follow Dâncu’s (2015) assessment of the reinvention of methods of political participation in Romania, as a constant “negotiation between a new and an old political culture” (p. 313). Democratic Transition All through the transition period that started after the 1989 regime change, patterns of synchronisation, inspired by Western models, have not been adapted to the understanding of self and society. The resulting passage from a communist regime to a new societal order generally labelled as “democratic”, whose structure was not yet stable and whose identities were not yet established, led to individual beliefs and practices that were influenced by both former and aspirational models of “Western” liberal democracy. Speaking of the passage from communism to the new regime, on the micro level, Romania was considered a propitious space for the articulation of “the normative narrative of transition into triumphalist capitalism” (Borcila, 2015, p. 70). But the transmission of practices, as well as the modalities of political action and the substitution of old rules by a new constitutional framework, remained under the influence of recent history, for lack of a real change in the level of dominant actors. The first attempts at political organisation underlined the preoccupation of elites to reform Romanian society around the monopoly, both practical and symbolic, of political parties. Sorina Soare describes this phenomenon as “a democracy of parties and not of citizens” (Soare, 2006, p. 80), insisting on the preponderance of political parties to the detriment of other types of association, such as trade unions or civil society organisations. This occupation of political space by many initiatives of political parties, instead of civil society organisations or citizens’ associations, characteristic for most of the countries in the region during the political transformation period, is often described as the result of what Ágh calls “over-particization (sic)” (2010, p. 76). The mere substitution of constitutional frameworks, as well as formal changes in state institutions, have not translated into a stable political environment. The reason for this apparent lack of ability to deal with political and social challenges was, according to Andreev (2009), the unfinished political and socioeconomic transformation.

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It took more than 20 years for broad segments of the Romanian population to feel a contradiction between cultural values and social practices in the sociopolitical environment, and to identify politics as responsible for the failed promises of the transition process. These changes in the cultural climate of Romanian society contributed to the anticorruption movement (that started in early 2017 and sporadically mobilised throughout 2018 and 2019) gaining greater influence. Regarding mass-protests in general, this discourse has enabled the emergence of mobilisation narratives that carry the potential to frame discontent with local elites as the historic contradiction between “modern Europe” and “backward Romania” (Gubernat & Rammelt, forthcoming). This recurring theme of protests, far from being just a mobilisation frame, represents the aspirational identity of these protests, and their participants, as it provides both a strong identity frame (the lack of post-transition and post-EU-accession achievements by domestic political elites) and a convincing prognostic frame: Western democratic “normalities”. Deconsolidation and Illiberal Democracy In a scenario of friends and foes, that started soon after the economic crisis of 2008, we see the rise of populist and anti-liberal tendencies in the Eastern European region. We are not only witnessing a global crisis of liberalism, but also a rise in radicalism, nationalism, and xenophobia, that are incorporated in the normality of everyday lives of people in the region. Constitutional reform, often coming under the veil of “moral renewal”, is bolstered by Eastern European leaders’ will to redefine the social and political order and to hold on to the power they have acquired through democratic elections, by translating it into the reforming of the domestic institutional order. They are fostering a re-attribution of value, or a change of meaning, to normative concepts such as the rule of law, sovereignty, and, ultimately, democracy. In Romania, the disaffection with political elites is often justified by the discrepancy between the promises of the political transition and its actual achievements, as felt by the population. Broad segments of the Romanian population were not, and are still not, politically as informed as their Western counterparts. This is to be observed while looking at coherent worldviews and/or through the lenses of political assessments. Ideologies, practically, do not exist; neither for the political elites nor for the majority of citizens. This is reflected in the visible shortness of memory of the

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electorate; Romanian politicians have learned to benefit from this for a long time.

Protests and Liminal Spaces During Romanian Protests Since 2011 Given traditionally lower levels of political involvement than in Western European countries, recent forms of collective action in Romania indicate yet another type of engagement: protests are usually taking place after working hours, they require only irregular physical presence, they profoundly rely on online mobilisation and they are characterised by a constant creative development of the ritualisation of protests, both in terms of repertoires and spaces. In such spaces, “newcomers” or “initiates” to Romanian protests, who, in many cases, had never protested before, have the possibility to integrate themselves in a cognitive and identity frame that was not overloaded with ideological or philosophical argumentation. In these liminal spaces, affiliation to a political group can then be based on individual affinities, cultural, or social, rather than on articulate, thought-out political considerations. The festive dimension of action, the modes of culture consumption associated with these protests, as well as their very moderate ideology, allowed for the emergence of a lifestyle, in which protest participation becomes an important element of one’s self-understanding. Besides the stimulating or, sometimes, even amplifying role of online social networks, street-level socialisation, and similar patterns of cultural consumption contributed to the development of a feeling of togetherness. The Scene The evolution of the Romanian culture of protest, a phenomenon at the intersection between artistic, political, and civic actions, was observable for the past six to seven years. In a previous article, Gubernat and Rammelt (2017) make use of the concept of the “scene” (Haunss, 2004; Haunss & Leach, 2007, 2009), to explain how cultural socialisation impacted on social mobilisation in Romania. New emerging actors mobilised for protests and protest participation gradually increased, resulting in a sustainable social movement. The identity of these new protest participants is formed in “scenes”, mainly as interactions focus on topics favourable to (un)conventional political participation, without structuring

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the individual’s everyday activities (Haunss & Leach, 2007). In the urban scene of Bucharest and other major cities in Romania, in protest camps, and during festivals, affiliates, and participants were able to experiment with new societal forms, with alternative approaches to society. Living these alternatives can be understood as breaking with the normal societas. They constitute, in our view, countercultural communes, and, henceforth, liminal sites of communitas in the sense of Turner (1969, pp. 94–130). More than being spaces of sociability characteristic of a consumer society, they became a socialisation element, part of a bigger ensemble contributing to the delimitation of critical communities, appropriating, and institutionalising public space as a space for contestation. Cultural consumption, within these spaces, of the alternative scene, provided a pool of mobilisable people who are ready to become participants to protests and “newcomers” to civic involvement. Even though the scene is both a belief and a lifestyle community (Haunss, 2004, p. 265), affiliation to the “alternative scene” seems to depend more on aesthetics than on actual political commitment. Without a clear subversive character, the socialisation in the scene opened the path for a dynamic of contention that became manifest with the first waves of social mobilisation in Bucharest, in 2011/12, and has persisted ever since. Events that have strongly contributed to the expansion of the population willing to take part in protests include festivals such as “FânFest” and “Street Delivery”; the latter one being an event gathering NGOs and independent cultural initiatives on the streets of Bucharest. “Street Delivery” is a street festival taking place in the city centre of Bucharest since 2006. Besides concerts and more consumerist approaches to entertainment, it also featured NGOs, urban lifestyle activities such as bicycle repair stations, and also incorporated workshops on civic involvement. The mere fact that the streets were closed to traffic, and that music was allowed after ten o’clock, created, for many affiliates of the scene, the feeling that the days of the festival were isolated from practices of everyday life. The long-term effects of festival participation further underlined the differences between the festival’s public and mainstream society. Festival goers contributed more creative approaches to protest, and less rigid mobilisation frames, to the dynamic of the recent cycles of dissent. In this way, “FânFest”—an annual mobilisation camp supporting the “Ros, ia Montan˘a” campaign, that took place in the mountains close to the actual mining site and offered workshops and roundtables on the subject as

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well as concerts and various fun activities—was able to attract “newcomers” to environmentalism that were previously not engaged in collective action (Mercea, 2014). Their contribution to enhancing the experience of protest for those already-involved in activism, by means of a whole range of different artistic activities that, ultimately, coagulated in the Ros, ia Montan˘a movement, cannot be overestimated. “FânFest” strongly contributed to increasing the visibility and the appeal of the campaign for sympathisers. By so doing, it spread further ideas about civic and political involvement and created a gratifying environment for such actions. At the same time, it also contributed to overcome the isolation of radical activists. However, the absence of a subversive character is to be noted, as many artists and bands try to delimit themselves from articulating a clear political stance. Protests as Liminal Spaces Other liminal spaces, where individuals could experience alternatives, were moments of heightened mobilisation and experiences of different normalities during protest events. Protest participation has been demonstrated to impact future mobilisations (della Porta, 2008; Giugni, 1999; Rammelt, 2018; Willemez, 2013). It generates new feelings and new collective identities, where participants can become immersed in new networks and acquire new experiences. We consider the following outcomes as being the most influential: (a) the accumulation of social capital, both relational and cognitive social capital; the first resulting in the creation of a militant network, via an accumulation of contacts, the second resulting in the creation and strengthening of a collective identity and internal solidarity; (b) the accumulation of protest specific knowledge and Know-How. The specific literature on symbolic dimensions of outcomes of social movements, that we are locating within the topic of cognitive social capital, encompasses the strengthening of internal solidarity and identity (Giugni, 1999, p. xiii), the creation of new collective identities amongst members of the activist circle (Amenta & Young, 1999, p. 34), as well as the importance of individual and collective experiences during protests, for the consolidation of activists groups. From the point of view of interactionist learning theory, we take into account that participants also acquire protest specific knowledge/KnowHow during collective actions. They get the knowledge on how to carry

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out protests, register them, demonstrate, thus, they gain organisational skills, or they learn how to file complaints against the police or local authorities. The accumulation of social capital and of protest specific knowledge results in ‘militant biographies’ of people, bound together by common goals and feelings of solidarity, for which protest becomes a part of their daily life. “Newcomers” need to identify with the stated goals of mobilising networks and to get to know the repertoires of action previously used, while also contributing to the dynamic of the protests via inventions and innovations, resulting in both, frame and repertoire expansion. The expansion of mobilisation frames, especially, stimulated by a growing involvement of formerly non-affiliated participants, manifest in a “creative” combination of already existing claims, as well as in the emergence of new claims. In this context, Mih˘ailescu (2012) calls the protesters a “generation of creative rebellion”. For the age group 25–40 years, which has long been “discouraged from civic involvement” due to a generic atmosphere where “a rejection of authority and rebellion [were seen as being] socially unacceptable behaviour” (Stoiciu, 2012), political activities have become more attractive due to their salience in social networks. The value shift in what concerns mass collective action and protesting, helped to increase the visibility of “the activist scene” and consequently facilitated access to new actors, such as football fans, and formerly non-affiliated environmentalists and anti-globalisation activists; “newcomers” to the arena of civic engagement and of non-institutionalised political activism (Presada, 2012). The sustained interactions between the protesters, both online and offline, increased the level of social embeddedness of already mobilised activists and “newcomers”, leading to an accumulation of contacts and to an increase in the quality and intensity of these contacts. Unlike earlier protests, the diffusion of this knowledge has not been limited to the already existing activist networks but has also reached newly mobilised participants. The acquisition of activist Know-how in prior protests contributed to reinforcing the collective identity and developing more efficient management skills (Willemez, 2013), especially during the protests against the exploitation of the gold mines of Ros, ia Montan˘a in 2013. Sustained interactions between likeminded activists in a politicised environment stimulated, both the elaboration of shared world views and individual capacities in arguing the network’s or the movement’s cause.

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The impressive number of newcomers and formerly unaffiliated supporters/bystanders during the Ros, ia Montan˘a campaign, the so-called “Romanian Autumn”, can be considered to be one of the main results of the 2012 protests. Social Media Activism The discussion of political topics, apart from mainstream media coverage on institutionalised politics was, for a long time, limited to a very small peer group, often the family. But protest participation requires a gratifying environment. Even though traditional media started paying more attention to protests due to the positive narrative created during the 2011/12 protests by the main opposition TV stations, Facebook became an even more influential mobilisation tool in this period. The so-called Facebook bubble is a highly gratifying medium. Notably concerning protest participation, immersing in a virtual environment in which being politically active, expressing a political opinion and sharing “proofs” of actively taking part in protests is perceived as a common good and it is highly stimulating for further mobilisation. Regarding personal involvement and participation in protests, it helps to curb the influence of the “generation of parents” that were, for a longtime, looking at protests with fear and awe. The Internet can be perceived as a liminal space per se in that it is characterised by a constant “in-betweenness”, being constituted of both the public and the private sphere. The separation between these two becomes increasingly blurred, and their boundaries are in constant flux (Thompson, 2011). One of the most crucial factors contributing to the dynamic of protests in Romania seems to be the use of modern forms of communication, notably social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter. This trend has been observed for Romanian protests at least since 2013, when the term “Ros, ia Montan˘a” became the most salient issue on social networking sites (Branea, 2013). Facebook was, according to Mercea, an efficient vehicle for strengthening collective identity, and the main source of information for protest participants in that time (Mercea, 2014). Present in the virtual space and almost absent in traditional media, Ros, ia Montan˘a activists could distinguish their grassroots approach from the approach of their opponent (Ros, ia Montan˘a Gold Corporation) whose campaign was seen to be the dominant discourse in traditional media. By doing so, they were able to create a narrative that used a “David vs. Goliath” metaphor,

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which, as the influential Romanian advertiser Serban Alexandrescu (2013) put it, had a positive impact on the group’s identity frame. Most protests, following Ros, ia Montan˘a, organised via Facebook events. This form of mobilisations is characterised by an absence of formal organisation, as several events and groups are created for the same protest and, consequently, produce an increased heterogeneity of participants. Legally, this form of mobilisation also creates a certain organisational uncertainty as it is unclear who is responsible for the protest. During the “Colectiv” protests of 2015, social networking services played a key role in short-term mobilisations in Bucharest. In 2017, and Romanian protests became, again, a salient topic in (international) media. The increased media attention was also due to the use of very up-to-date repertoires of dissent. From the so-called “light revolution”—inspired by the use of cell phones during the protests, to the use of social media, this generation of initiates’ discovery of politics and protest seems to coincide with current technological developments, which enabled the formation of a seemingly leaderless, spontaneous, and all-inclusive movement. There were, of course, more visible and more involved participants, stimulating public opinion—such as the “opinion leader 2.0” (B˘alt˘are¸tu, 2017). In this regard, Facebook groups, such as “Coruptia Ucide” (“Corruption kills”) or “Rezistenta” became efficient mobilising channels. During massive anti-corruption protests in early 2017, the page Coruptia Ucide experienced an explosion in total likes; starting at the end of January 2017—the moment the protests occurred, according to Facebook insights for this page. The biggest increase in likes was reached between the 31st of January and the 4th of February. In that period the page increased its likes from five thousand to 45 thousand. Gains in net likes of the page coincided with the highest participant numbers for the 2017 protests; with the peak in mobilisation identified as being February 1–5. The concurrence between engagement on the Facebook page and offline participation in the streets can be understood as an indicator of the mobilising potential of this page.

Conclusion As much as one could disagree with Castells’ (2015) enthusiasm in regard to the amplitude of networked social movements, the sphere populated by contemporary social movements he is observing, namely, the “hybrid space between the Internet social networks and the occupied urban space”

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(p. 11) proves valuable to the explanation of the change in protest participation witnessed over the past years in Romania. This comes in line with the multi-positionality of social actors. Our choice of analysing liminal spaces in terms of scene, protest events and social media activism is suitable, then, to explain the hybrid character of the changing forms of activism in Romania. The lower levels of political participation and less defined world views, likely to be a result of the regime change, have allowed the creation, in the liminal spaces of protesting, cultural consumption, and online social networks, of an entirely new specific subculture; one shared by individuals that came to know each other and to understand their society in similar ways, through lived experiences. While the scene has contributed to a participatory experience that has strengthened emotional ties, and enabled the accumulation of relational social capital, the space of social network sites became the main source of information for political engagement, facilitating a constant feeling of belonging to a community that has enabled the re-sharing of knowledge acquired through collective experiences. In this specific dynamic, “effective change is affective change” (Georgsen & Thomassen, 2017, p. 211). This seems to be one of the main reasons for which recent protests in Romania do not deliver a fundamental critique of the existing mechanisms and power configurations structuring our societies, neither on an ideological/theoretical level, nor on a programmatic or discursive level. Far from identifying structural elements of domination, such as the monetisation of societies, increasing disenfranchisement, etc., that are not only structuring Romanian society, but most “modern” societies, mass-protests would look towards societies in which these structures are most penetrating, in order to identify a vision for the future and to generate a strong diagnostic and prognostic mobilisation frame. However, the ideological instability attributed to Romanian protests and protest participants enables protesters to identify and interpret societal challenges in accordance with criteria jointly developed in transitional spaces; to establish goals of mobilisation that have become a lifestyle, more than a continuous struggle for a specific cause.

References Ágh, A. (2010). Post-accession crisis in the new member states: Progressing or backsliding in the EU? Studies of Transition States and Societies, 2(1), 74–95.

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CHAPTER 14

Crowds, Events, Enaction: Liminal Politics at the Chattri Memorial Susan L. T. Ashley

Events are a big part of heritage studies, a field that investigates why and how societies designate aspects of the past as important. The heritagisation of the past is a process that places value upon places, people, things, practices, histories, or ideas as an inheritance to be passed on to future generations (Ashley, 2014; Sánchez-Carretero, 2013). Who is producing and consuming the valuations, and for what reasons, will alter the nature of the process? Issues of power affect official heritage systems, and these are often contested, or alternative significations offered through unofficial sites and activities (see Ashley, 2014, 2016; Harrison, 2013; Harvey, 2001). Events are used within heritagisation in both official and unofficial capacities to publicly acclaim, celebrate, or challenge the value of tangible and intangible heritage. The term event is used here to indicate a planned activity or “…an occurrence at a given place and time; a special set of circumstances; a noteworthy occurrence” (Getz, 2007, p. 18). Yet analysis

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of the “eventfulness” (Richards, 2015) of such activities is often overlooked in studies of the heritagisation processes. The aim of this chapter is to analyse “event” as an important process of heritage-making and to examine the radical potential of event “crowds” as affective communities acting within liminal conditions. The chapter investigates the ways that a heritagisation event in a remote location in the UK was used to reinscribe the value of that heritage site within the lives of ordinary people. Argued here is that the liminal, affective, and anarchistic qualities of this intensively experienced crowd event aided an unanticipated postcolonial politics. The event in question was an annual memorial ceremony in the UK, organised to honour Indian soldiers who fought on the Western Front during the First World War. It was centred around the Chattri Indian monument built in 1921 in an isolated part of the Sussex Downs outside of Brighton, and the site of the cremation of 53 Indian soldiers who died in a military hospital nearby. This was a relatively new event pulled together by local volunteers in the year 2000 but based on an annual British Legion event that had been established in 1950, after the Second World War. I attended the memorial event on two occasions in June 2013 and 2014 and interviewed a series of participants off- and on-site. I wanted to understand this memorial event in relation to changing valuations of heritage. I felt at the time, during my participation in the activity, that a significant change or turning point was happening around me. Here was an evocative heritagisation event that was carried out intentionally to mark the past; that declared a valuation of the past; and was carried out beside what was clearly a remarkable historical artefact. The ceremony was a charged-up, electric, communal enactment of a heritage in a location that meant something to those involved. So, what was going on here? Why did we feel that this event itself was important, a transformational part of our lives and the lives of those with whom it was being shared? How did the “eventfulness” experienced by the crowd make me think that we were effecting change? The Chattri monument, and the annual ceremony around it, exemplified heritagisation: the act of signifying and marking the past as valuable within these people’s lives. Participants went out of their way to come here to this spot, at this moment, and through their activities of beingthere, through the emplacement of their bodies and bearing witness, they participated in this public statement about value. “This is our heritage”, some people said. Gathering around that physical heritage object, the

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Fig. 14.1 Chattri Indian Memorial site north of Brighton on the Sussex Downs. Photo by author

Chattri, in an intangible enactment of a ritual, was the point of what we were doing—the act itself. What was striking about the event was its dynamic human atmosphere that combined with the power of its setting. The Chattri’s location, high on the windswept Sussex Downs and out of sight of anyone except occasional hikers, marks this place as experientially different from most Great War remembrances. There is no auto access; instead, the site can only be reached by a 15-minute walk across the fields of sheep and cow dung from a local road (see Fig. 14.1). It feels more akin to Stonehenge or isolated sacred places from prehistory—a boundary or entry point to another world. At least 250 people gather at this location on the downs each year in June, with some participants arriving by foot, some by car and motorbike, and others by hired bus from London. Assorted people came from across the country—Indian descendants, local residents, Black history enthusiasts, a military biker group, military officials, and ethnic organisations— mixing with The Lord Mayor of Brighton, the Queen’s representative, the local Marquis, and the Indian High Command. There was a liveliness, a sense of chaos, a lack of convention, and an openness to unexpected and random cross-cultural encounters, marked by a profusion of skin colour

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and lack of dress code. These were mostly strangers, but under unconventional circumstances people moved about the space and talked to each other freely. The making-valuable of this moment was not just about the thingness of the historic memorial—that marble Chattri monument—or about the place, high on the chalk downs, although that certainly heightened one’s emotions. It required the presence of other people, and the interactions and social sense of being-in-each-others’-presence to assert its value. The scene here was chaotic but incredibly moving—both the place and ceremony somehow churned up energy and emotion that participants felt reinforced the making-valuable of this moment. This mixture of people came together to create something new—it referenced the past, but achieved resonance among the participants from seeing, being seen, interacting, and relating with each other, marking out a sense of occasion and asserting eventfulness.

Memorials, Liminality, and Politics The liminality of the Chattri monument and ceremony enabled its political potency. The monument, the event, and the participants possessed that liminal character as “betwixt and between” both in time and space, and in culture and sensibility, which heightened the potential for change and transformation. A fundamental feature of liminality is its lack of fixity or permanence, a threshold region where the rules and hierarchies of society are suspended, and expressive actions encouraged (Horvath, Thomassen, & Wydra, 2015). Liminal settings allow deconstructing, examining, and restructuring of ideas and systems, a postmodern perspective that can particularly favour the colonised by legitimating marginal subjectivities and ways of knowing, and affirming liminality as a valid and recognised space of occupation (Atkinson, 2002; Bhabha, 1994). Yet, the Chattri event here took place beside a monument—something clearly fixed in its situation. Monuments are symbolic political devices, “ritual symbols” that assume a sacred tone (Turner, 1974), meant to “colonise an imagined future with our values” (Ashworth, 2008). As suggested by Nora (1989), collective memory is attached to such lieux de mémoire, where symbolic elements of a landscape establish and fix the value of the past. Nora writes that “statues or monuments to the dead owe their meaning to their intrinsic existence” (1989, p. 22) as solid and monumental heritage markers. But an essential factor of the

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Chattri monument was its character as a mnemonic device outside of mainstream ideas about heritage in Britain. Despite its apparent fixity, the monument’s liminal scope was reinforced instead by its remote location, its design, its history, and its connoted meanings that situated the site as singular, marginal, and not quite British in significance (Ashley, 2016; Littler & Naidoo, 2005). Nora points out that some monumental lieux act as “ensembles” constructed over time, “forever open to a full range of significations” (1989, p. 23). Material symbols have been shown to be rallying points, an object around which political protests can be mobilised in public, visible events, and the call to decolonise can be voiced (Knudsen & Andersen, 2019). During such times, social hierarchies are dissolved, and new traditions become possible (Turner, 1974). I interpreted the actions that I witnessed and felt at this unique marginalised heritage site as one such liminal political phenomenon. Participation at the Chattri ceremony was not a passive audience event, but an affective community (Slaby & Röttger-Rössler, 2018), asserting a conscious act of citizenship (Isin, 2008) triggered by the presencing of the past (Macdonald, 2013). Macdonald’s idea of past presencing frames relationships with the past that are more than remembrance and encompass the unconscious or affective, as well as cognitive, levels of experience. It is within this sensibility that heritagisation—the conscious making-valuable of the past through embodied actions—can be understood as an enaction of heritage. Seen in this way, the Chattri event was a form of political action on an everyday scale, in a disorganised location outside of the mainstream, where the affective presence of the crowd enacted a postcolonial politics that was anarchistic in quality. Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary, non-hierarchical associations employing what is called a horizontal politics (Springer, 2014). The search to reshape daily life around different “structures of feeling” is critical (Williams, 1977). Springer says that anarchism is primarily “about actively reinventing the everyday through a desire to create new forms of organization” (2014, p. 252). Actions are self-initiated, rather than waiting for political occasions organised by political systems. Instead, people simply start doing. They begin organising alternatives by following their own areas of concern outside of authorised locations and open themselves to the transformative possibilities that unorganised and inexpert experimentation have to offer.

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Crowds, Events, and Affect To think about, and better understand, the ways that the Chattri event incorporated both liminal and anarchistic tendencies in a politicising heritagisation process, four key characteristics will be discussed here: The crowd as an unformalised constituency of people, often strangers The event or happening as a mode of activity through which change might occur Affect as a shared sensibility that maintained the group-ness of the collective and generated a “collective courage” Enaction, as a consciously performed act by people, without “permission”, that makes public statements about citizenship.

An anarchistic politics says that community is necessary, people coming together, but they step beyond kin and neighbour and instead develop a relationship with strangers; strangers coming together in a shared experience (Kropotkin, 2008; Warner, 2002). Interest in unformalised groups acting together has been enhanced in recent years by the web and online platforms (Conway, 2013). Nowadays, such groups are often characterised as “The Crowd”—we might think of crowdsourcing (Owens, 2013) fundraising from multiple small sources, or the crowd as the public invited to tag digital cultural heritage collections. Business talks about the “wisdom of crowds” where anonymous masses create knowledge through sites like Wikipedia (Warner, 2002). According to Gustav Le Bon (1897), the crowd is a distinct form of temporary collectivity. The crowd doesn’t have a history and is not held together by unstated norms. But the crowd can also be more than just an aggregate of disembodied individuals. When embodied, a crowd holds itself together affectively, via imitation, contagion, and suggestion. A primary characteristic of a crowd is that its operation can become a force of its own, no longer individuals, but an organism with a sense of its own invincibility (Katz & Dayan, 2003). But there is much uneasiness about this notion of crowds: the idea of loss of individuality and of rationality—the masses, chaotic, suggestible; the mob. Scholars employ the idea of Bahktin’s carnivalesque to describe the character of these crowds, where the masses get their chance to reverse the status quo, be playful, or vengeful—which can also be called liminal and anarchistic.

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People get meaning and belonging from doing things in concert with others. They are part of something bigger than themselves with a collective sense of purpose. This is sometimes expressed as a process of commoning—of joint action, of creating things together, of cooperating to meet shared goals (Esteva, 2014). Within heritage studies, Simon and Ashley (2010) have called such purposeful crowds “publics”, in the way that people come together as strangers in the public realm around heritage practices to create something new. Crowds as publics are performative, sociable, reflexive, committed, reflexive, stable, and issues-oriented (Dayan, 2005). This form of crowd coalesces around issues and calls for attention in their performance. In social psychology, crowds come together in intensely felt moments of “discharge” or “events” (Dean, 2015). Such events are significant occurrences rather than simple happenings. Historians view an event as a process that is unique, in motion and contingent, then marked as a point of rupture or change like the phrase “events that change the course of history” (e.g. Sewell, 2005). Events can signify something as important by drawing and focusing attention on a happening and assigning value in a public way. In Deleuze, events involve activity and change. But events are impossible to pin down—never a beginning, nor an end, but always in the middle; they are “wholly immanent, original and creative productions” (Stagoll, 2010, p. 91). Deleuze describes events as “sense itself”, an intense becoming and an effect (Badiou, 2007, p. 40). An event might constitute a place of becoming that has no predetermined outcome but entails new possibilities: an effect that can change relationships. An “event-effect” can constitute a turning point in the material constitution of things; the change in intensity that is produced alters the relations between things (ibid.). For Dean (2015), the “egalitarian discharge” of the crowd event can be an intense experience of democracy, where the crowd is The People, not just a faceless mob. The here and now of their presence asserts political change. Studies of social movements have pointed out how across the globe such crowd events are pressing their opposition and bringing about change (Springer, 2014). Bodily effects contribute to the sensibility of eventfulness and the communal power of the crowd. Affect is part of the material dimension of any event—we experience sites and happenings at an immediately bodily, enfleshed, and sensuous level. This applies both to the materiality of the location and to the body. An affective encounter is about experiencing an aesthetic thrill—a sense of being alive. The process of commoning

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has also been described as aliveness —of joint action and creating things together that requires creativity, situational relationships, and experiential practice (Bollier & Helfrich, 2015). For Deleuze, the body’s affectivity does not refer to what the body is but rather what the body can do when entering into relations with other bodies, images, and things to “become-others” (Golanska, ´ 2015, p. 782). Peter Linebaugh maintains that the idea of commons is not a resource or a place, it is an activity: “if anything, it expresses relationships in society that are inseparable from relations to nature. It might be better to keep the word as a verb, rather than as a noun, a substantive” (Linebaugh, 2008, p. 279). This is not a purely visual experience, but involves other senses and sensations and involves place, bodies, and sensations. This does not come from isolated individuals but in relationship to others. Out of this complexity of experience—our heightened experience—we narrate for ourselves a story. This sensation is never simple. It is always doubled by the feeling of having this feeling. It is self-referential—a combination of the affective and our conscious awareness of being in an event and understanding its significance (Golanska, ´ 2015). And this is where the political potential lies, the potential for change and disruption inherent within liminality. In their discussion of publics, Simon and Ashley (2010) note the way purposeful crowds come together in encounters or events through heritage practices. These events can entail a break or turning point in existing patterns of social existence, thus hold the promise of bringing something new into the world. Importantly for Simon, an event gathers people together over a duration, in a performative mise-en-scène into which they enter. It is the mise-en-scène that sets the terms of the event’s legibility and affective force: the crowd displays a particular mode of attentiveness to the address of this scene, where its affective character structures the possibilities of thought and judgement (Simon, 2014). The experience of the striking setting with embodied performance—its eventfulness—creates an experience that then influences how participants subsequently think about it; that this happening is important. The Chattri memorialising possessed these features: participants performed affectively in this space and this gathering each year. The ethereal quality of the location was part of the impact of the mise-en-scène: because of the powerful sense of place at this site, the aura of its physicality as sacred object and evocative space, the affective sensibility was heightened. There is something genuinely haunting… You feel very spiritual…you’re at peace… when you’re there you feel that you’re looking out at the

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city at a particular spot and know, um…it has more significance standing there than if you were anywhere else, because you’re actually somewhere that carries a lot of history behind it (Interview M, 26 March 2014). The excitement within the crowd was palpable. All were willing to come from a great distance, and for older people with some discomfort, tramping over the fields in order to place themselves at this spot. Participants described or marked this as an event they could not miss or had to attend; their participation in that annual occurrence became a significant part of some people’s personal narrative. I had a woman; an elderly lady and her grandson, came down from Leicester…. And she came up to me in a wheelchair; her grandson pushing her, and said to me that she wanted to attend [the Chattri] before she died. And I felt very touched by the people that use that as a place to visit, before they die… there’s nowhere else in England. (Interview B, 9 December 2013)

Something unique was created here—an unexpected and non-traditional experience that depended on and referenced the past, but achieved resonance from seeing, being seen, interacting, and relating with each other, marking out the occasion. A Hindu song, sung by Bindu Vachhani, is now cemented into the event. A participant responded to Bindu: “Men cry when you’re done with it”. Said another of the entire occasion, I’ve seen people cry, I’ve cried. It’s also a very spiritual occasion, very emotional, very peaceful, very solemn. You can feel all those things. You can really sense it when there’s the two minutes of silence and you can hear birds tweeting and it’s rather beautiful in a spiritual way…. (Interview D, 27 October 2013)

The meaning of the Chattri event was fluid for most participants and characterised by some as the creation of something new. Its heritage connotation might soon be stabilised through further representation—an important effect of heritage-making. But the meaning created here has not yet been stabilised in representation, although the website, newspapers, and lately even national television have labelled this an Event of Consequence. For some, the event had potential for a new sense of Indianness in Britain: I just feel that we’re creating our own culture because there’s nothing here for us… you can walk around Brighton and not see anything to refer to that - nothing for the Indian man around Brighton. (Interview C, 23 March 2014)

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I’m looking for a community here, an Indian community, bringing them, together, you know. And one way of doing that is to get the Indian community involved in the history. (Interview D, 27 October 2013)

Reflecting on Springer’s characteristics of anarchism and horizontal politics, I suggest the Chattri event was anarchistic in sensibility. It drew together a heterogeneous crowd at this unlikely location, clearly outside of the mainstream, in an event that was out of the ordinary for the people there, and where the affective presencing of the past enacted a desire for something more. Change and politics emerged through enaction—affective acts that we understand as significant.

Publics, Politics, and Enaction Radical geographers examine the “horizontal politics” entailed by the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements as anarchistic in quality. Springer (2014) highlights the materiality of their occupation of public spaces in cities around the world and the assertion of politics, the here and now, through an affective presence outside of established structures. The creation of an exceptional event in Occupied spaces by an amorphous crowd in a disorganised fashion, and the physical transformation of space through active, sensory bodies created a material and symbolic statement of presence. Importantly as well, commentators have noted that such anarchistic political actions do not just lie in large public spectacles of protest, but also in community actions located in the everyday. Chomsky (2005) points out that the traits of anarchism are always in existence; in practical terms, society has always organised itself in spaces outside of authority. This coming together is a creative practice of “world-making”, a kind of productive enaction that lies at the foundation of democratic practice (Arendt, 1958 [1989]). At the Chattri event, a “public” was formed; loosely organised, and political in the sense of strong motivations, attitudes, and ideas (Simon & Ashley, 2010). This mixed group of participants assembled to reinterpret old rituals in relation to each other, enacting an affective politics that consciously aimed at asserting a “heritage” and their right to shape their world. Interrelations were a strong aspect of the crowd dynamic—realising one’s own positioning while empathising with others (Ashley, 2016). This mutual recognition that occurred here enabled the formation of a democratic public.

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What is interesting about this is that it is very intercultural. You get people who under normal circumstances would never meet. You get bikers, your Hindu culture—it’s really nice actually. (Ceremony participant, 9 June 2013) English people come up to me and say what an amazing feeling there is at the Chattri… They feel that, you know, the community spirit. And the diversity of the people that are there, black, white, Indian—they’re all there. And they feel that. This is a very ‘white’ County—East Sussex and Brighton and Hove. So, this is a good example of multiculturalism in practice, if you like. Where everybody just comes in and there’s a bond. (Interview D, 27 October 2013)

People were enacting themselves as political beings, consciously performing new acts that made public statements about their place in the UK and their relations with others. Participants could feel that something innovative and something valuable was created here. It’s about humanity, right? Humanity rises above nations, we are all humans. Anybody doing similar things in another country, as a human being, we will be respectful. (Focus Group—23 March 2014)

But as a democratic politics, this enaction was never unified: such a process involves ongoing conflicts and contradictions that are unresolved (Lynch, 2014). For example, while the Chattri memorial event was perceived by many white participants as multicultural integration in action, some Indian participants took the stance that they were publicly asserting the values of an outsider non-white minority in relation to the insider English heritage. Such is the nature of anarchistic communal enaction: not state-sponsored acts but local relationships through which individuals and groups struggling for decolonisation, recognition, or other matters of concern, but also interacting purposefully to change the shape of society (Cornwall & Coelho, 2007; Isin, 2008; Knudsen & Andersen, 2019). This politics was enacted at the Chattri through a communal rite of memorialising—a public consciousness-raising where alternative ideas were celebrated and actually lived without seeking permission. This was not about protest as is typically seen, as the way that subaltern groups react to dominant agendas. Instead, horizontal politics here involved direct action, an everyday doing outside of those agendas in ways that were transformational. The Chattri was once a colonial memorial,

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intended in 1921 to speak about India and Indians in a way that would reinforce imperial power. That aspect of its heritage is now invisible, with new activities of immigrant Indians that have no reference in most cases to the origins of the monument. Instead, participants were attracted to this site and activities by the desire to make their presence known in the UK, and to support intangible spiritual values through their attendance. The actions of the crowd on the ground and the Indians performing on the platform, created a new heritage in this annual event using affective power. Knudsen and Andersen call this “an affective politics using nonrepresentational bodily strategies” which they argue is essential now for “actual social movements to mobilize in current political controversies” (2019, p. 1). At the Chattri, this was achieved not through protest, nor was it an institutionally driven desire for “engagement” and “participation”, it was just doing things following an alternative logic. The horizontal logic of this enaction could be seen in the blur between stage and audience, where this performative and anarchistic sensibility ensured that the crowd could not be “curated” or controlled (Fischer, 2015). There were frequent crossings between staged ceremony activities and the crowd: crowd members brought tokens onto the burial platform, and prayers, hymns, and music broke the barrier between. At the end, the crowd surged onto the platform for a jolly group photo (see Fig. 14.2). This was an anarchic political moment when the materiality of the space and the people allowed a collective courage that inspired a sense that we were all, together, enabled and powerful—we were all equal members of this event. Can this event be considered liminal in the sense of transformative and effecting change? Daniel Dayan (2005) discusses political talk and civic culture as a continuity between the pre-political and the political. He notes that turning everyday ordinary talk into something more involves the coming together of strangers with shared concerns in a new form of autonomous organisation. Here liminality is accepted as a legitimate status: a threshold region of uncertainty and emotional intensity, expressive imagination and inversion of social hierarchies (Atkinson, 2002). But the key to an event’s liminal qualities lies in public performance—being obvious and in the open (Dayan, 2005, p. 15). Decolonial movements have historically used public, visible activist events to contest colonial heritage (Lasky, 2011). In the minds of those I interviewed, it was the participation in public with others, made through the body and emerging from this communal witnessing of each other, and the enaction of their

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Fig. 14.2 Participants converge on the steps of the Memorial for a final group shot, June 2013. Photo by the author

presence at that time and in that place, that was the core value of this heritage-making event. The public here created a world in Arendt’s terms, understood as a creative doing; as action that carries emergent potential. I interpret heritagisation as this process: moving from an affective experience to a cognitive comprehension of the value of the past and asserting the right to make new claims of value by our actions.

Conclusion From its origins in 1921 as an imperial gesture towards India, the Chattri memorial has been both tangible historical resource and place of heritage-asserting practices; a symbolic sign and ritual site marked by communal felt experiences. When the memorialising ceremony was taken over in 2000 by the local Indian community, the monument and activities at the site took on new meanings. The affective crowd event by this minority culture has been interpreted here as performative

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heritage-making, an example of past presencing using Macdonald’s concept, where a diverse group of people came together in an embodied act of being-there in relation to the past and each other. These activities acted heterogeneously to consciously foreground an outsider heritage in a conscious public expression of politics by minority people, but also enacted relational connections and support of those outside this heritage. Lasky has drawn attention to the importance of “being-in-relation” in the practice of equality in addition to the reconnection to tradition as sources of strength, as an end in itself for political change (Lasky, 2011). The Chattri event was a political event not only for witnessing, belonging, and gaining recognition, but also for making conscious interventions over the racialising discourses that are a fact of life for participants. What I am saying is why WE should be, why Indian people [should] only remember this thing. I think the most important thing is that BRITISH people should be remembering them as well. (Focus Group—March 23, 2014)

Past presencing at this unusual event was an enactment that made demands on the attention and attitudes of the broader UK society to embrace the potential for transformation exemplified by the multiplicity, plurality, and liminality of the Chattri, thus contributing to the postcolonial possibility of being-in-relation in the here and now.

References Arendt, H. (1958 [1989]). The human condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ashley, S. (2014). Re-telling, re-cognition, re-stitution: Sikh heritagization in Canada. Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, 11(2), 39–58. Ashley, S. (2016). Acts of heritage, acts of value: Memorializing at the Chattri Indian Memorial, UK. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 22(7), 554– 567. Ashworth, G. J. (2008, May 6–10). Heritage: Definitions, delusions and dissonances. Keynote Address, Heritage 2008: World Heritage and Sustainable Development Conference. Greenlines Institute, Portugal. Atkinson, E. (2002). The responsible anarchist: Postmodernism and social change. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(1), 73–87. Badiou, A. (2007). The event in Deleuze. Parrhesia, 2, 37–44.

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Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge. Bollier, D., & Helfrich, S. (2015). Patterns of commoning. Amherst, MA: Off Common Books/Levellers Press. Chomsky, N. (2005). Chomsky on anarchism. Oakland: AK Press. Conway, J. M. (2013). Praxis and politics: Knowledge production in social movements. New York: Routledge. Cornwall, A., & Coelho, V. (2007). Spaces for change? The politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas. London: Zed Books. Dayan, D. (2005). Paying attention to attention: Audiences, publics, thresholds and genealogies. Journal of Media Practice, 6(1), 9–18. Dean, J. (2015). Crowds and party. London: Verso. Esteva, G. (2014). Commoning in the new society. Community Development Journal, 49(1), i144–i159. Fischer, N. (2015). Agency in a zoo: The Occupy Movement’s strategic expansion to art institutions. Field, 2(Winter), 15–40. Getz, D. (2007). Event studies: Theory, research and policy for planned events. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Golanska, ´ D. (2015). Affective spaces, sensuous engagements: In quest of a synaesthetic approach to ‘dark memorials’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(8), 773–790. Harrison, R. (2013). Heritage: Critical approaches. London: Routledge. Harvey, D. C. (2001). Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7 (4), 319–338. Horvath, A., Thomassen, B., & Wydra, H. (2015). Liminality and the search for boundaries. In A. Horvath, B. Thomassen, & H. Wydra (Eds.), Breaking boundaries: Varieties of liminality (pp. 1–8). New York: Berghahn Books. Isin, E. F. (2008). Theorising acts of citizenship. In E. F. Isin & G. Nielsen (Eds.), Acts of citizenship (pp. 15–43). London: Zed Books. Katz, E., & Dayan, D. (2003). The audience is a crowd, the crowd is a public. In E. Katz, et al. (Eds.), Canonic texts in media research (pp. 121–136). Cambridge: Polity Press. Knudsen, B. T., & Andersen, C. (2019). Affective politics and colonial heritage, Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(3), 1–20. Kropotkin, P. (2008 [1902]). Mutual aid: A factor in evolution. Charleston: Forgotten. Lasky, J. (2011). Indigenism, anarchism, feminism: An emerging framework for exploring post-imperial futures. Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action. Accessed 13 July at https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index. php/affinities/issue/view/572.

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Le Bon, G. (1897 [2009]). The crowd: A study of the popular mind. Southampton, UK: Sparkling Books. Linebaugh, P. (2008). The Magna Carta manifesto: Liberties and commons for all. Los Angeles, USA: University of California Press. Littler, J., & Naidoo, R. (2005). The politics of heritage, the legacies of race. London: Routledge. Lynch, B. (2014). Whose cake is it anyway? In L. Gouriévidis (Ed.), Museums and migration: History, memory and politics (pp. 67–80). London: Routledge. Macdonald, S. (2013). Memorylands: Heritage and identity in Europe today. London: Routledge. Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire. Representations, 26(Spring), 7–24. Owens, T. (2013). Digital cultural heritage and the crowd. Curator: The Museum Journal, 56(1), 121–130. Richards, G. (2015). Events in the network society: The role of pulsar and iterative events. Event Management, 19(4), 553–566. Sánchez-Carretero, C. (2013). Significance and social value of cultural heritage: Analyzing the fractures of heritage. In M. A. Rogerio-Candelera & M. Lazzari (Eds.), Science and technology for the conservation of cultural heritage (pp. 387–392). London: Taylor & Francis. Sewell, W. H. (2005). Logics of history: Social theory and social transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Simon, R. I. (2014). A pedagogy of witnessing: Curatorial practice and the pursuit of social justice. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Simon, R. I., & Ashley, S. (2010). Heritage and practices of public formation. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16(4–5), 247–254. Slaby, J., & Röttger-Rössler, B. (2018). Introduction. In B. Röttger-Rössler & J. Slaby (Eds.), Affect in relation: Families, places, technologies (pp. 1–28). Oxford: Routledge. Springer, S. (2014). Why a radical geography must be anarchist. Dialogues in Human Geography, 4(3), 249–270. Stagoll, C. (2010). Event. In A. Parr (Ed.), The Deleuze dictionary (Rev. ed., pp. 89–91). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Turner, V. (1974). Liminal to liminoid, in play, flow, and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. Rice Institute-Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92. Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Public Culture, 14(1), 49–90. Williams, R. (1977). Structures of feeling. Marxism and Literature, 1, 128–135.

CHAPTER 15

Egyptian Revolutionary Art Through a Liminal Framework Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso

Introduction The Egyptian revolution of January 25, 2011 produced a visible surge of creative cultural activity in public spaces, including Tahrir Square, but reductive narratives (see Abaza, 2016) that spoke of this creativity as a “cultural awakening” in a politically and culturally dormant country effectively ignored the underlying (and rich) historical, social, and political undercurrents of its emergence and existence.1 Therefore, this chapter starts with the premise that revolutionary contexts, and the 1 Such narratives, which appeared in academic articles and in the media, were also

supported by international festivals showcasing these “new” cultural activities. Ilka Eickhof noted that festivals, such as the annual Shubbak Festival in London and the 2011 Venice Biennale, helped reinforce these narratives because they “problematically us[e] art as a code word for proper consciousness or modernity. Representations of the educated, modern, graffiti-spraying rebel do not challenge global structures…. rather, the assumed anti-position of the Arab artist fits into the Euro-US ideal of the progressive individual who breaks with tradition, closely allied to the rise of the bourgeoisie in modern Europe” (Eickhof, cited in Bird, 2014; see also Abaza, 2016).

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temporality and processes of these contexts, are crucial to understanding the evolution of artistic practices, events, and narratives that emerge in the temporal registers of any revolution or upheaval. As Jillian Schwedler (2016) argues in her memo “Temporality and the Arab Revolutions”, different moments call for “different narrative understandings about the event”, and so “[m]any narratives, discourses, analytic frameworks, best practices, and so on, are anchored in specific temporal registers. They shape, and are shaped by, what actors do and what they understand to be happening” (Schwedler, 2016). This chapter thus draws on a framework of liminality to make sense of the art produced during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. It addresses how the different temporalities of the revolution—each phase defined by different revolutionary events and contexts—resulted in diverse liminal moments that demanded new strategies and responses, including the production of artistic outputs. As we look back, several years after the initial revolutionary moment in January 2011, and attempt to make sense of the events which occurred (and their consequences), one of the ways in which we can most effectively do so is to look at what people did and why, and what it meant in that particular time and place. Revolutionary art is one of the ways in which the revolution was experienced, contested, described, and narrated, as the revolutionary process itself unfolded throughout its different stages. As Sune Haugbolle and Andreas Bandak aptly note, if we are to take the practice of politics seriously, outside of its more formal understandings, this necessarily “means that we pay attention to what revolutionaries do—their repertoires of contention—as much as we pay attention to what they say and write as they seek to create a new political world” (Haugbolle & Bandak, 2017, p. 191).

Liminality and the Egyptian Revolution The concept of liminality was first introduced by Arnold van Gennep in 1909 in his seminal work, The Rites of Passage, and later developed by Victor Turner beginning with the chapter “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage”, in his 1967 publication, The Forest of Symbols. Van Gennep wrote about the significance of understanding the rites of passage as a significant (and highly ambiguous) period of transition, a ritual in which an individual transitions from one state to another during transformative events such as the shift from childhood to

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adulthood (Turner, 1967, 1969). These transitions essentially transform one’s social state (Armbrust, 2017) which means that in the liminal phase, individuals, communities, even society as a whole “experiences communitas, does things one normally wouldn’t do; feels bonds with people one normally wouldn’t feel bonded to, and then [one] emerges transformed” (ibid., p. 226). As Armbrust elaborated on Turner’s examination of liminality theory, all rituals (and not just rites of passage, as van Gennep set forth) “involved breaking away from social norms, and entry into a liminal phase in which normative social conventions are expected to be overturned” (Armbrust, 2017, p. 226). Bjorn Thomassen, who applied van Gennep and Turner’s conceptualization of liminality beyond rituals to political theory and revolutions, suggests that; …the concept of liminality has its relevance to political and social theory…as it was developed by anthropologists to make sense of human experience and processes of subjectivation during moments of dissolution, in other words, during social and political crises. (Thomassen, 2014, p. 118)

For him, the framework of liminality helps us address revolutions as a historical process as well as a period of liminal time/liminal crisis characterized by “in-betweenness”, in which the normative order is momentarily suspended and essentially turned upside down, to provide space for a new order, new narratives, and new ideas to emerge. In this way, liminality allows us to focus on the temporality of the Egyptian revolution as essentially characterized by anti-structure, which can manifest in intense creativity and endless possibilities. As such, it foregrounds agency, subverts economic, social, and political distinctions, while at the same time highlighting a heightened sense of collectivity and a utopian community of equals (communitas). In Turner’s argument, the three stages of the ritual process (rupture, a breach in the normative order—liminal period of play, destruction, ambiguity, creativity—redress, an attempt to re-establish order and structure), would, according to Thomassen (2017); take political form via the stages of epistemic rupture and radical critique, followed by a playful liminal period of unlimited freedom and questioning of prevailing norms, reintegrated and normalized into realized political emancipation, protected by a constitution of legitimate order to the benefit of the general populace. (p. 303)

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However, as Middle East scholar Walter Armbrust emphasizes, in regard to the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the three phases of ritual (breach/rupture, liminal phase, and redress) in the liminality framework could not be neatly applied. As Armbrust (2017) writes, “Initiates in the ritual were joined together in a state of solidarity that Turner termed ‘communitas,’ which we can understand intuitively as Tahrir Square during the mythical first 18 days of the Revolution. Finally, initiates in the ritual process would be re-incorporated into normative society in new social positions. This, of course, did not happen after the 18 days of Tahrir Square of the Egyptian revolution” (p. 226). Mark Peterson similarly argues that initially the Egyptian revolution neatly fitted the breach/rupture-crisis-redress phases of social drama (which is a kind of ritual) described by Turner. Peterson notes that the revolution began with “a breach of the structures of ordinary life” which then led to the “ensuing crisis [which] ushered in a period of antistructure, in which the ordinary rules of governance and civility did not apply” (Peterson, 2015a, p. 176). Furthermore, throughout the 18 days crisis, “various actors of many types sought to define the ends of the revolution and to bring some form of redress that would bring it to a conclusion” (ibid.). However, Peterson notes that in the aftermath of the 18 days of the Egyptian revolution there was no return to structure and law, and that the revolution remains in a contingent process over its meaning and direction by various actors, which, along with its uncertainty, pushes people “into liminality from which there is no known exit, and hence no way back to whatever previously had constituted normality” (ibid.). In these understandings, revolutions, as Walter Armbrust suggests, are “liminal crises”, since they are constituted as “a state of being stuck in liminality with no obvious way to get out of it” (Armbrust, 2017, p. 227). In the case of Egypt, what seems to characterize the contemporary moment, following the January 25, 2011 revolution, is a move “from rupture to permanent liminality” (Thomassen, 2017, p. 303), described “as time stalled, without hope for emancipatory futures” (Haugbolle & Bandak, 2017, p. 192). In fact, given the ambiguity of the post-2011 state of Egypt, scholars remain at odds over how to understand the initial rupture of the Egyptian revolution which captivated our imaginaries and invoked a sense of endless possibilities and potential.

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The Writings on the Walls: The First Phase of the Egyptian Revolution (January 25, 2011--February 11, 2011) On January 25, 2011, tens of thousands of Egyptians from all walks of life—representing every social and political spectrum—gathered to join the protests called for by the April 6 Movement and the “We are All Khaled Said” Facebook page. For most of those I spoke to, the initial days of the revolution with its communal spirit working towards a unified goal for the sake of others, the breakdown of distinctions and the civilized behaviour of protestors, meant that they were completely immersed in the revolutionary experience during the first phase of the revolution, and, as such, did not have time to produce revolutionary art. As Amr Nazeer said, revolutionary art was not a primary concern for them at that moment, During the 18 days of the revolution…nor two months after…did I do any graffiti, no stencils, I didn’t even record any videos. My cousin would ask why I didn’t record anything at this time, but I was so hooked up with the operations during those 18 days I didn’t have time to document it, I was living it. It was overwhelming, and I never thought for a second to record it or do a stencil. (Amr Nazeer; Cairo, personal communication, March 9, 2014)

However, during the 18 days of the revolution, graffiti, or the scribbling on walls and tanks, was as a crucial method of information and communication for many; when all other technological forms were completely cut off it played a vital role in getting messages across to the public. According to Layla Amir, who was still in middle school when the revolution occurred, it was a sort of “journal for the revolution” (Layla Amr; Cairo, personal communication, May 1, 2014). Ammar Abo Bakr labelled the walls during this time as a “newspaper” and Saiko said that when all telecommunications were cut, the stencils he made with his friends (which, he said, played a very important role during the 18 days revolution, as they were able to be sprayed on quickly and meant the police could be avoided) acted like “markers of the revolution” (Saiko Maino; Cairo, personal communication, August 26, 2014), by continuously reporting what was going on or informing people where to head to for the next round of protests (ibid.). As Ammar Abo Bakr noted,

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When graffiti was written all over army tanks saying ‘Down with Mubarak’… it was a sign for the people at home as if telling them the army approved, because the army would have never allowed people to write this on their tanks if they did not approve. From what I understood in those 18 days this was a major sign that encouraged people to go down. Everyone focused on this sentence without tying it to graffiti or to writing, and artists did not write it, it was just regular people who had markers in their pockets or random spray cans or any tool they could use to be able to write. They would lend each other money to buy things they could write with on tanks. This was pure popular action and had nothing to do with artists. In my opinion most artists at this time were acting the same way, for me during the 18 days I didn’t draw anything, I was like the public I just wrote information on the walls, this was more important because it was a revolutionary tactic and we were in the midst of a revolution, how could I draw while I am in the midst of a revolution during those 18 days? I want the collective, as they move, to read crucial information on the walls. (Ammar Abo Bakr; Cairo, personal communication, April 30, 2014)

El Teneen, an anonymous revolutionary artist who did not have any background or interest in the art prior to the revolution, said it was irrelevant whether one could draw or not, because the idea of doing graffiti or scribbling on the walls during the 18 days of the revolution was not sensational, but natural. The liminal moment made it possible for everyone to participate on the walls in any way—either to communicate, motivate, or articulate some sort of demands, in a very real effort to materialize their presence in public spaces. During this crucial liminal moment, in the early days of the revolution, when it was unclear whether Mubarak would indeed step down, it was not considered trendy or artistic to write on walls, rather, it was an organic, natural and necessary act for people from all backgrounds to communicate with drawings or words, either revolutionary slogans, messages warning revolutionaries to be careful, or articulating demands from the public. Perhaps one of the reasons why one was awestruck by the graffiti and writings of the 18 days was because it was part of a larger, improvised performance of revolution which captured the imagination in its sheer ingenuity. As Armbrust (2015) argues, Tahrir was a “symbolically prominent performance space” which was also “famously improvisational” (p. 88) through sociopolitical and cultural acts, which made,

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[c]ountless observers marvel…at the clever signs made, astonishingly, by novice activists with no previous history of protesting; at the creative use of history in invoking political resistance movements of earlier eras such as the student movement of the early 1970s, the 1919 Revolution against British imperialism, or cultural icons of the Nasser era; poetic slogans; ‘tweets from Tahrir’; or in some moments, the flexible tactics used to organize battles against regime forces. (ibid.)

It was this improvisation, by people from all socio-economic backgrounds, which arguably “made the 25 January Revolution so compelling to the world” (ibid.). During those 18 days, the necessity of having “something” on the walls, on the streets, on tanks, on government building was not only embraced by those I spoke to, many of which became the famous revolutionary artists of the Egyptian revolution but also embraced by ordinary people in the streets. This organic, popular reaction to the transformative moment of the revolution and the need to document, archive, communicate, warn, or motivate, fulfilled a crucial need for that particular moment in time and produced a revolutionary narrative that embodied the improvised voices of those involved in the “thick” of the revolutionary moment. As El Teneen said, simply the fact that one could now “do” something that has never been done before—such as openly writing or drawing on the walls—was itself an emancipatory and transformative act (El Teneen, Cairo, personal communication, April 30, 2014). For El Zeft, it epitomized the rupture in the structural order, and it represented revolutionary art at its finest, because it was a new way of doing things, a transgression of the fiercely guarded public space of Mubarak’s regime by everyone and anyone—“the people who wrote ‘Hosni Mubarak should fall’ on the tanks, this is pure art – pure art. I wish I did it” (El Zeft; Cairo, personal communication, April 27, 2014). Such understandings of art during those 18 days truly represented a scenario where respondents were located “on the limit” (Szakolczai, 2009, p. 148) during the rite of passage, in the liminal moment—that is, an unscripted state whereby their “previous certainties are removed” and they have now “…enter[ed] a delicate, uncertain, malleable state” which may “…alter…the very core of one’s being” (ibid.). The 18 days of the Egyptian revolution embodied the “anything can happen” potential of the liminal moment. It was characterized by ambiguity, yet also hope and endless possibilities, creativity, and potential. And because “anything”

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(and everything) did happen, in a sense (through creative, organic political and cultural acts of expression), those 18 days continue to serve as a powerful—and more importantly, enduring—critical imaginary, illustrating that the Tahrir truly was a “time out of time” (Sabea, 2013. Online). Although the initial 18 days of the revolution fit neatly into Turner’s concept of liminality, and was, according to many I spoke to, representative of “an alternative experience of ambiguity, a time when unity and possibilities for real, meaningful change seemed genuinely within reach” (Peterson, 2015b, p. 69), the subsequent phases of the revolution are not as clear cut and “much harder to clarify through this processual model” (Peterson, 2015a, p. 177). The aftermath of the 18 days of the revolution was mired by contingency—those who wanted to pack up and leave Tahrir and restore order, while others wanted to stay and insisted that the revolution was only just beginning and that their key demands had not been met (Peterson, 2015b). This would later serve as a key source of tension between those who saw revolutionary art as a visual return to chaos and disruption. Yet the second phase of the revolution saw art remain as part of the revolutionary aesthetic and process, as it attempted to restore the anti-structure of the initial phase of the revolution, and thus marked key events during significant moments of military rule.

Street Art Scene Grows: The Second Phase of the Revolution: SCAF2 Rule (February 2011--June 2012) The anti-structure and communitas of the initial 18 days seemed to give way to a “restoration of the preexisting social structure” (Peterson, 2015a, p. 172) as SCAF tried to quickly contain the revolution in the second phase of the revolution. For those who were wary of SCAF’s takeover, it seemed to mark the beginning of the end of the revolution as political and social divisions began to take place and “various actors in this arena sought to sponsor and enact particular visions of the new Egypt” (Peterson, 2015a, p. 172). The main question at this time was, “what’s next?” As Armbrust notes, “while the transition from Mubarak necessarily plunged Egypt into a liminal state, experienced first as communitas, nobody knew what to do next. There was no ‘something else’” 2 Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

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(Armbrust, 2017, p. 227). After the initial euphoria of the 18 days, there was no clear next step in the revolution’s progression. Yet even within an environment of uncertainty and struggle, after SCAF took control of the country, and perhaps because of it, the aftermath of the 18 days inspired the continued growth of a countercultural scene, which initially emerged from the sense of ownership and control of public space gained during the first phase of the revolution. This ushered in—as Elliot Colla suggested—a “DIY spirit on the street” (cited in Shenker, 2011. Online) during that particular moment in time, whereby people felt that; they can look after themselves following a revolution. They police their own blocks, they pick up their own trash, and they can paint on walls. They don’t need permission from anyone. It’s a fundamental shift. Before, the initial assumption regarding anyone doing anything on the street was always ‘who let you do that?’ Now the initial assumption is ‘I can do that’. (ibid.)

This attitude was not only reflective within the sociopolitical sphere, but also the cultural sphere, whereby artist and activist Ganzeer, for example, argued that no matter the potential backlash by the authorities for the open cultural scene, an “[artistic] door has been opened and you can’t close it” (Ganzeer, Cairo, Skype Interview, 22 November 2013).

The Evolution of Street Art This period of time ushered in an ambitious new era of revolutionary art—one that evolved from stencils and hasty, scribbled, messages on the walls, streets, and army tanks (which marked the urgency of the revolutionary moment and the organic need for expression and communication during those 18 days) to large murals, posters, and elaborate stencils. The primary target was SCAF, which was extraordinary given the military’s “unquestioned prestige” (Armbrust, 2015, p. 101) as the central Egyptian institution (and the nation’s pride, as is commonly reflected in narratives and images of the army). That prestige was swiftly attacked, shortly after Mubarak’s had been ousted, on March 9th, 2011, “the SCAF began its first attempt to declare the revolution over by arresting activists who remained in Tahrir Square, despite orders to

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leave” (Armbrust, 2015, p. 101) and the subsequent “virginity tests” of at least 7 women on March 10, 2011. Not only did revolutionary art evolve from writings on the wall and simple drawings, but it also flourished, intensified, and became more collaborative—and varied—in content. From martyr murals, scathing criticisms of the army (where ‘yasqut hukm al-’ askar’, or “down with military rule”, was frequently seen all over the walls, accompanied by chants during protests), attacks against Mubarak and supporters/remnants of the regime (fulool ), and efforts to remind the public of the importance of maintaining the momentum of the January 25th revolution; revolutionary art significantly evolved in the second phase of the Egyptian revolution. The intensification of revolutionary art, largely a response to the struggle against military rule in an effort to reconstitute the liminal moment of the initial 18 days, characterized most of the second period of the revolution.

The “Second Revolution”: A Return to Anti-structure Through Art? (November 2011--March 2012) Perhaps no street best represents the maturity and strengthing of street art during the second phase than Mohamed Mahmoud’s street. Mohamed Mahmoud’s strategic location, just off of Tahrir Square and leading to the Ministry of Interior, saw it become the prime battleground and emerging memorial space over the course of the revolution (Abaza, 2012a, 2012b, 2013a, 2013b), as well as what Mona Abaza calls the “revolution’s barometer” through the revolutionary art which continuously emerged and evolved in response to the events in the street (Abaza, 2012b). As Jankowicz notes, “Many places in Cairo are home to revolutionary graffiti art; many others have become synonymous with revolutionary conflict. What makes Mohamed Mahmoud street unique is that it has become both” (Jankowicz, 2016. Online). Mohamed Mahmoud Street is a significant liminal space where the revolution was experienced and lived, and thus a central site of revolutionary art primarily due to its location at the centre of revolutionary events, where lives were lost, martyrs mourned and commemorated, and battles between the government and protestors raged on. The first Mohamed Mahmoud Street battle, on November 19, 2011, saw central security forces violently disperse a sit-in organized by the families of those injured

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or killed during the 18 days of the revolution in January and February 2011, who called for the transfer from SCAF rule to civilian rule, and stated that they will boycott parliamentary elections scheduled to begin at the end of November 2011. This incident would instigate one of the most brutal battles on Mohamed Mahmoud Street by those angered by the attack on the families, during which more than 50 people were killed. This street battle saw the former allies of the revolutionaries, the Muslim Brotherhood, condemn the protestors as they allied with SCAF—as Peterson (2015a) notes, within a social drama (such as a revolution), after the initial breach phase (January 25, 2011, the first day of the Egyptian revolution) of the normative order, the crisis stage brings in a period of anti-structure, where “sides are taken, coalitions formed and fissures spread and deepen through a number of coordinated and contiguous relationships” (p. 176). This period of time saw the reconstitution of the experience of antistructure and communitas of the liminal moment of the initial 18 days of the revolution in a second wave of the Egyptian revolution, when social distinctions were irrelevant and Egyptians from different walks of life came together in solidarity against the brutal pushback of the security forces. The first battle of Mohamed Mahmoud was marked by an increase in violent tactics used by riot police against protestors, in which the extensive use of tear gas, rubber bullets, grenades, “eye snipers”, and live ammunition was used to suppress the protestors. “Eye snipers” were called as such because protestors were shot in the eye by professional snipers, in a move believed to be an intentional targeting by the authorities to maim and kill protestors.3 A disturbing video distributed on YouTube shows a central security force officer targeting a protestor’s eyes with rubber bullets, with his colleagues congratulating him. The officer in the video, Mahmoud Sobhi el-Shinawi, was later arrested for three years after turning himself in. “Wanted” stencils were sprayed in downtown Cairo calling for his arrest after the video was released. According to Ahmed Aboul 3 “It is claimed [that Central Security Forces (CSF)], have targeted protesters’ heads – it has been reported that more than 80 people have lost eyes and many more have sustained head and neck injuries since the protests in January [2011]…Claims by protesters that the targeting was more pronounced in the November clashes are backed up by Ghada Shahbender of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, who says she heard a highranking CSF officer instructing soldiers to aim at the protesters’ heads as she passed through their ranks on 19 November” (Tomlin, 2011).

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Hassan, an Egyptian political editor, this stencil “nourished revolutionary identity, growing it from infancy to adulthood, culminating in a fully formed entity that tracks down killers and taunts them on the walls near their neighborhoods and workplaces” (Aboul Hassan, cited in Hamdy & Karl, 2013, p. 134). Revolutionary art was continuously evolving, evading generalization and responding—and reacting—to revolutionary events, as it constituted itself aesthetically, physically, and symbolically within the liminal experience of revolutionaries. The effort followed, to reconstitute the anti-structure of the revolution, counter SCAF’s repressive measures to contain the revolution, and bring about a return to the structural order. The first was the “Mad Graffiti Week”—in response to the army’s brutal tactics and continued hold on power. The second was the “No Walls” campaign in March 2012, a response to the increasing militarization of downtown Cairo from November to March 2012. In its openness, Mad Graffiti week saw a surge in anti-military art, alongside the documentation and archiving of this art, through Facebook groups (the most prominent being “Mad Graffiti Week”, “Mad Graffiti Week Alexandria”, and “Graffiti the streets of Egypt”; among others), Twitter accounts, and Flickr pages. A democratic, decentralized, and collective initiative: this was not a project revolving around the revolutionary artist “stars” of the revolution but was intended for everyone to do as they like. During this initiative, stencil booklets were available for download, making it easy for anyone to be able to use to spray paint in their cities or towns. As Ganzeer said, I think Mad Graffiti Week was actually the first time an explosion, a little bit [happened]. I want to say like revolutionary art, but just people summoning up the courage to just go out on the street and scrawl something on the wall, even not just Cairo but shady little towns that are out in the middle of the nowhere. There were a couple reports of some kids getting arrested4 for spraying slogans on police stations, stuff like that, in small towns. All this happened in Mad Graffiti week. And also there was this thing that we did, myself and other people, we just started sharing lots of designs online, that other people would take and use, and cut, and stencil, and whatever, and use it their own ways, so yeah I wouldn’t say there was a big art movement from the art crowd…just from regular people. (Ganzeer, Cairo, Skype Interview, 22 November 2013) 4 During Mad Graffiti week, “three youths are reported to have been arrested — one in Banha City and two in Mahalla City — for acts of ‘vandalism.’ These youths were reportedly detained, questioned and then released on the same day” (Charbel, 2012).

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Subsequently, the “No Walls” campaign of March 2012 was a collective initiative and response to the segregation imposed by the zoning of downtown Cairo through concrete walls and steel barricades placed at certain strategic points. The mission of the creative “No Walls” campaign was to aesthetically “open” the streets in order to symbolically subvert the walls very physical and imposing existence. Artists and volunteers from the public worked together to defy the authorities attempt at marginalizing their physical movements and disrupting citizens ordinary lives, in an attempt to maintain the liminal moment of the revolution through continuously subverting the physical (and symbolic) barriers of the normative order. It is such subversive acts that illustrate that public space is no longer easily relinquished; rather, it is constantly being reappropriated in novel ways in order to reconstitute the liminality of the revolution, indicating that the battle of contestation over public space is a symbolic one as much as a physical one. Attempting to reassert the ability to be actively present in public space, one of the most significant feats of the liminal moment of the Egyptian revolution, the use of graffiti on the physical symbols of obstruction (walls/barricades), is a powerful attempt to discredit the return of the normative order and delegitimize its tactics.

The Third Phase of the Revolution: Morsi’s Presidency (June 2012--July 2013) Morsi and the Brotherhood’s unpopular rule was marked by an intensification of revolutionary art, as they became prime targets of satire and scathing insults (just as Mubarak and SCAF before them) for their failure to deliver on their campaign promises. Most of those I spoke to said that the widespread sentiment in the street was that Morsi’s Brotherhood rule, from its early days, was viewed as a continuation of the crony capitalism characteristic of Mubarak’s regime, under an Islamic guise. The repertoire of revolutionary art leading up to Morsi’s election was primarily focused on emphasizing that the normative order was continuing under a different guise and that nothing would change with the elections. Even with the façade of the implementation of structure and law, it was, according to most of those I interviewed, the structural order repeating itself with the same narrative. These sentiments would set the tone for the third phase of the revolution, which saw Mohammed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood elected as president. Although Morsi’s Presidency was brief (it lasted from June 30, 2012 until July 3, 2013,

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when he was forcibly removed by the military), his rule was controversial and his economic, political, and cultural policies polarized the Egyptian public (Hellyer, 2013). In light of Morsi’s unpopular rule—where, according to one journalist, “[s]tep by step, Morsi turned his back to the revolution” (Khorshid, 2013)—revolutionary art intensified in an effort to deconstruct what they saw was Morsi’s failed campaign promises and lies. According to Mona Abaza, the backlash against Morsi was fierce, and the art on the walls did not fail to address every one of his shortcomings, Al-ikhwaan khirfaan (‘The brotherhood are sheep’) was one main slogan that has multiplied all over the walls [referring to them as followers void of critical thought], which was often accompanied with plenty of tamed white sheep. Dustuurhum ghair dusturna (‘Their Constitution is not our constitution’), Dustuur al-ikhawan Baatel (‘The Muslim Brotherhood’s constitution is invalid’). Morsi has been portrayed in graffiti as a hand puppet, as a thug, as a liar displaying his chest (alluding to his performance during his first speech, after becoming president, when he bared his chest to the crowd at Tahrir Square, to show that he is one of the people and does not require a bullet-proof vest), or as the queen of clubs card being manipulated by a bigger evil looking joker. (Abaza, 2013b. Online)

In November 2012, on the first anniversary of the Mohamed Mahmoud Street clashes, where conflict once again occurred and many, such as young Gika, died; Ammar Abo Bakr repainted the martyr murals. His intention this time, however, was not to commemorate the martyrs, but to serve as a stark reminder (through such graphic images) that violence would continue and that nothing would change under Brotherhood rule. In November 2012, on the first anniversary of the fights against the security forces in Mohamed Mahmoud Street, I came back to paint a martyrs’ gallery again. But this time, I painted them with really gruesome faces—exactly as they looked after they died. I wanted to give the people a sign that there would be more bloodshed (Abo Bakr, 2015. Online).

Conclusion Different liminal moments throughout the different phases of the Egyptian revolution structured experiences and framed our discussions and understandings of revolutionary art at different temporal registers. Revolutionary art was not thought of the same way from 2011 until 2013—it significantly evolved according to the context within which

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the revolutionary process was unfolding. Many of the cultural producers I interviewed did not actually create revolutionary art during the utopian 18 days of the revolution. In those days, they were engaged in participating and experiencing the revolution and used scribbles on the walls and hasty stencils to show dissent, protest, and warnings to other revolutionaries, especially when communications were cut in the early days of the revolution. During this time, revolutionaries managed to upset the normative order and think of the street as the natural location for creative expression. The second and third phases of the revolution saw cultural producers, along with revolutionaries, attempt to reconstitute the experience of anti-structure that the first phase of the revolution brought about, despite being ruled by SCAF and then Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Using liminality is not intended to provide clear cut answers, rather, it is used to unravel the historical process of the revolution through its art and create a more nuanced lens in which to understand that art within a particular historical process (the Egyptian revolution). As Thomassen aptly notes, In a perfect world, the tripartite structure of van Gennep’s rites of passage would take political form via the stages of epistemic rupture and radical critique, followed by a playful liminal period of unlimited freedom and questioning of prevailing norms, reintegrated and normalized into realized political emancipation, protected by a constitution of legitimate order to the benefit of the general populace. It rarely happens like that. In effective history, the tripartite process more often resembles a long sequence of destruction that starts with desperate screams of alienation, hopeful longings for freedom and justice that continue into generalized despair and ends in nihilism and neo-totalitarian grips of power, protected by a state of emergency. We have moved from rupture to permanent liminality. (Thomassen, 2017, p. 303)

What the liminality framework does, in the context of this research, is allow us to ground understandings of art within certain places, spaces, and events, and perhaps create a more nuanced understanding of how that art is framed within a revolutionary context.

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References Abaza, M. (2012a, March 10). An emerging memorial space? In praise of Mohammed Mahmoud Street. Jadaliyya. Available online at http://www. jadaliyya.com. Accessed 29 Apr 2013. Abaza, M. (2012b, June 12). The revolution’s barometer. Jadaliyya. Available online at http://www.jadaliyya.com. Accessed 27 Feb 2013. Abaza, M. (2013a, January 25). The dramaturgy of a street corner. Jadaliyya. Available online at http://www.jadaliyya.com. Accessed 13 May 2014. Abaza, M. (2013b, October 7). Mourning, narratives and interactions with the martyrs through Cairo’s graffiti. Available online at http://www.e-ir.info. Accessed 20 Apr 2015. Abaza, M. (2016). The field of graffiti and revolutionary art in post-January 2011 Egypt. In J. I. Ross (Ed.), Routledge handbook of graffiti and revolutionary art (pp. 318–333). Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Abo Bakr, A. (2015). Art revolution—Egypt: Walls of freedom. Tea after Twelve, Issue 1, Chapter 2. Available online at http://www.tea-after-twelve.com. Accessed 29 June 2017. Armbrust, W. (2015). The iconic state: Martyrologies and performance frames in the 25 January revolution. In R. Abou-El-Fadl (Ed.), Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting domestic and international struggles. London: Routledge. Armbrust, W. (2017). Trickster defeats the revolution: Egypt as the vanguard of the new authoritarianism. Middle East Critique, 26(3), 221–239. Bird, L. (2014) New coat, same colors (sic): Ilka Eickhof on funding and cultural politics. Available online at https://madamasr.com. Accessed 20 Dec 2018. Charbel, J. (2012). Graffiti week returns with calls to resume revolution. Egypt Independent, 25 Jan. Available online at http://www.egyptindependent.com/ graffiti-week-returns-calls-resume-revolution. Accessed 19 Nov 2012. Gennep, A. V. (1960 [1909]). The rites of passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hamdy, B., & Karl, D. (Eds.). (2013). Walls of freedom: Revolutionary art of the Egyptian revolution. Berlin, Germany: From Here to Fame Publishing. Haugbolle, S., & Bandak, A. (2017). The ends of revolution: Rethinking ideology and time in the Arab uprisings. Middle East Critique, 26(3), 191–204. Hellyer, H. A. (2013). How Morsi let Egyptians down. Foreign Policy, 2 Aug. Available online at http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/02/how-morsiletegyptians-down. Accessed 4 Sep 2013. Jankowicz, M. (2016, March 23). ‘Erase and I will draw again’: The struggle behind Cairo’s revolutionary graffiti wall. The Guardian. Available online at https://www.theguardian.com. Accessed 23 June 2016. Khorshid, S. (2013). Mohamed Morsi has turned his back on Egypt’s revolution. The Guardian, 27 Jul. Available online at https://www.theguardian.com/

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Index

A Activism, 247 Aesthetics, 35, 72 Affect, 268, 269

B Badiou, A., 8, 169, 174, 175 Benjamin, W., 45, 147 Black body, the, 8, 167–169, 181 Body, 129, 169, 172, 269

C Consumption, 10, 46, 67, 70, 72, 102, 106–108, 231, 253, 259 Critical event studies (CES), 3, 9, 18, 82, 168, 169

D Debord, G., 5, 44, 147, 150 Deleuze, G., 104, 269, 270 Democracy, 235, 237, 250–252, 269 Design, 48, 59

Dissent, 9, 26, 158, 223, 230, 232, 236, 241, 254, 293

E Event, 1, 20, 30, 38, 59, 80, 82, 99, 101–103, 105, 106, 122, 124, 136, 147, 152, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 187, 204, 206, 208, 209, 217, 223, 226, 232, 235, 263, 268, 269, 280, 288 Evental, 3, 25, 26, 29 Event design, 44, 48, 49, 51, 59–61, 69, 70 Events management, 3, 35, 38, 42, 44, 46, 49, 50, 59, 71 Experience, 4, 8, 25, 39, 40, 44, 50, 61, 66–72, 83, 84, 87, 109, 120, 131, 138, 142, 145, 147, 151, 157, 158, 188, 195, 203, 259, 269, 270, 286

F Fadistas, 9, 189, 190, 193, 195, 196

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. R. Lamond and J. Moss (eds.), Liminality and Critical Event Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3

297

298

INDEX

Fado, 9, 187, 189–191, 193, 195. See also Fadistas Foucault, M., 3, 46, 235, 239

G Gender, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88–90. See also Gendered Gendered, 80, 83, 86, 87, 92, 94

H Higher education, 46

I Imaginary, 30, 91

J Jameson, F., 8, 145, 154

L Lacan, J., 30 LGBT, 6, 79, 85 Lifeworld, 19, 50, 127 Liminal, 60, 61, 63–65, 67–69, 72, 187, 249, 253 bubble, 69 experience, 27, 39, 43, 60, 67–69, 80, 84, 85, 88, 89, 94, 105, 112, 157, 290 space, 7, 8, 10, 11, 24, 59–63, 65, 66, 69, 71, 72, 102, 105, 109, 111–113, 181, 189, 225, 250, 255 Liminality, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 17–19, 35–48, 59–73, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 99, 102, 103, 107, 112, 120, 121, 123, 132, 135, 138–141, 149, 152, 157, 172–174, 187–189, 192,

203, 205, 207, 208, 211, 223, 225, 226, 228, 229, 232, 235, 240, 247, 248, 250, 266, 274, 280–282, 291 Liminality and Event Design, 5 Liminoid, 2, 5, 7, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 35, 37, 40, 42, 43, 45, 49, 50, 60, 62, 65, 67, 68, 72, 84, 102, 105, 120, 125, 128, 129, 131, 132, 140, 142, 187, 188 M Media, 4, 81, 106, 157, 207–209, 214, 215, 234, 257 social media, 10, 39, 41, 68, 72, 224, 228, 234, 247, 250 Memorial, 10, 11, 213, 266, 288 Memory, 3, 10, 27, 91, 168, 214, 225, 228, 229, 241, 252. See also Memorial O Olympic Games, 6, 59, 60, 63, 65, 99, 101, 104, 113 P Politics, 8, 11, 80, 82, 89, 144, 147, 169, 170, 181, 210, 218, 228, 248, 258, 266, 272, 280 Populism, 209, 211, 215 Privilege, 6, 79, 91, 94, 177, 212, 232 Protest, 8, 9, 11, 28, 155, 156, 158, 167, 168, 171, 176, 180, 216, 223–226, 229, 231, 239, 241, 248, 252, 253, 267, 272, 273 as liminal spaces, 255 R Race, 213, 239

INDEX

Racial politics, 172 Real, the, 174 Resistance, 4, 7, 100, 104, 135, 153, 155, 157, 158, 225, 231, 285 Revolution, 11, 140, 249, 258, 279, 280, 283, 286, 288, 291 Ritual, 2, 4, 5, 23, 31, 36, 38, 40, 43, 44, 48, 59–66, 68, 70, 72, 104, 121, 135, 149, 170, 172, 180, 189, 203, 218, 265, 275, 280, 282 Ritualistic, 65 Rupture, 4, 25, 206, 216, 217, 269, 281, 282, 285, 293 S Sexuality, 80, 82, 84, 88 Social media activism, 257 Sport, 1, 7, 8, 38, 42, 60–73, 100, 106, 121–123, 158, 169, 170 Sport events, 61 designing, 68 Street art, 286–288 Subject, 175, 176, 178, 179 Subjectivity, 35, 44 Subversion, 9, 79, 83, 94, 95, 206, 207 Surveillance, 10, 148, 225, 232–235, 239

299

T Thomassen, B., 60, 105, 122, 140, 143, 147, 157, 173, 249, 281, 293 Tourism, 9, 43, 46, 47, 110, 122, 127, 187, 191. See also Tourists Tourists, 9, 106, 113, 187 Transgression, 83, 91, 93–95, 285 Transgressive, 50, 80, 83–86, 93 Turner, V.W., 2, 4, 5, 20, 23, 29, 36, 37, 60, 62, 63, 65, 73, 83, 84, 93, 104, 119–122, 127, 131, 139–143, 172, 174, 207, 229, 249, 280, 281, 286

V van Gennep, A., 2, 7, 20, 36, 60–62, 65, 73, 121, 137, 138, 152, 280, 281

W World Gymnaestrada, 7, 119, 121, 125

Z Zizek, S., 101