Liminality and the sacred

Milbank sums up Victor Turner by saying that “the sublime is no longer outside the social, at the margin of individuality [as in Weber’s charisma], and nor is it the social whole [as in Durkheim]: instead it is situated within society in the constant negotiation of dangerous passages. Paradoxically, it is empty, marginal sublimity which enters into the most fundamental social transits.”

Milbank is unpersuaded.

He sees a modern religion/culture separation underlying Turner’s claims, in which religion is reduced to “a suprarational, existential sphere.” Outside modernity, he claims, “it is simply not the case that in most societies it is the elusive moment of transition that is the prime site of the sacred. On the contrary, there are only transitions because there are stages and distinctions, and these have a hierarchic, value-laden quality so that they are themselves imbued with sacrality.”

For instance, Aaron goes through a liminal week on the way to becoming priest, but that transition is only a transition because there is a prior distinction between holy and profane. Aaron is neither not-holy nor holy during that week; he is inbetween. And the between is not the site of holiness. Holiness lies on the other side of liminality.

Milbank has similar criticisms about the notion that taboo is an invocation of sacrality to “manage the unclassifiable.” Rather, “a prime interest in classification is to separate the relatively pure and sacred from what is impure.” Sacrality is already there in the classification, and is not brought in at some second-stage. He points to the Levitical system where rules of “taboo” exist “only in relation to norms which place a positive sacred value on preserving a balance between sameness and difference.”