ABSTRACT
This chapter begins the book's focus on the in-betweenness inherent in displacement process. In particular, in the first part of the chapter, heed is paid to van Gennep's drawing of attention to boundaries crossed in ritual separation. It explores the ways in which representational processes are themselves displacing of the things on which they centre. Focusing on pre-colonial Burmese royal regalia and objects in London's Foundling Museum, it examines some particular aspects of representation - synecdoche and metaphor - and asks what gets lost in the process of these translations. Ingold's meshwork is of course complex, messy, knotty, and allows the reader to see bumpy travel if they look closely; but in its relentless emphasis on continual movement it is easy to miss the thresholds that the wayfarer repeatedly has to cross. The inevitable partiality of museum representations is not only a matter of how artefacts are deployed and of historiography, ethnography, technique and style, however.
