ABSTRACT
Many studies in heterogeneous fields have gleaned from the suggestion that liminality may be an enduring experience. As a consequence, only incremental changes are expectable when liminality ends up being a real transition to become a stable way of working. The extension of liminality beyond a time-bound experience is testified in heterogeneous fields. D. Moran offered evidence of recurrent liminality in an extreme case, that of Russian prisons’ visiting suites, which could reinforce theorizing about the emergent feature. The less institutionalized and normative societies become, the more liminality turns into an ‘institutionalized and ongoing phenomenon’ that can be protracted indefinitely. The persistence of liminality is fraught with potential drawbacks. The observation and related conceptualization of the reiteration of liminal experiences has raised the issue of the ‘liminality muscle’ or ‘liminality competence.’ By stressing the dynamism of liminality, the possibility for a given liminal experience to turn into a different type of experience is instead taken into account.
