Inversion and Queer Liminality in the Nineteenth Century

Shanghai Baby (1999) and the In-Between

“…The term liminality itself was first coined by Arnold van Gennep a folklorist, then developed by anthropologist Victor Turner in 1969 that finally established liminality as an important idea on understanding cultural experience (Barrow et al, 2020). The word liminality is like an umbrella term for states or experiences of transition and ambiguity in context of cultural experience, and usually shown as a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty of one self (Banfield, 2022;Beech, 2011;Chakraborty, 2016;Finlay-Jeffrey, 2020). Its flexibility give people the freedom to use the concept on so many different topics and field of study (McIntyre, 2012).…”