The liminarity of rite: a process of ontic transformation

Abstract

The text discusses the point of contact between symbolic anthropology and Greimasian semiotics. The paper shows the conceptualization of the ritual process focused specifically on the characteristics of the liminary phase of rite: a transitory state of indifferentiation where ambiguity, ambivalence and paradoxes predominate. The individual being subjected to the ritual becomes a malleable material and suffers an ontic and cognitive transformation. The transition plunges the individual in the condition of pre-subject or proto-subject that experiences the semiotic and structural forms as virtualities and, from an amorphous field or horizon of tensions, goes through a generative process from discriminations and divisions to the constructions of significant forms of the world.