The Liminal Group (of Bowling Green, OH & other strange places) is
proud to present the e-zine version of _Liminal_, an alternative
scholarly culture studies magazine.
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_Liminal 1.0: Manifestos, Rants, Crossword Puzzles, etc._
c. 1992 The Liminal Group. All rights reserved.
For info, write The Liminal Group, Box 154, BGSU, Bowling Green, OH 43403
(email c/o
[email protected])
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*feel free to distribute this in hard- or soft-copy. just don't sell it.*
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STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
LIMINAL seeks to apply new inter and transdisciplinary methods,
theories, ideas, concepts, and approaches to the study of cultural
phenomena as well as the inventive application of existing approaches.
Submissions should be exploratory and questioning in attitude and
may take the form of verse, cartoon, photography, collage, etc. in
addition to research monographs and essays.
The term "cultural phenomena" is taken to mean, but not limited to meaning:
1) an activity engaged in by humans as members of a social network,
2) the product(s) of such engagement(s),
3) the motivators of such activities or engagements,
4) the functioning of such social networks themselves.
Editorializing is encouraged, pontification is not.
============================================================
John A. Dowell
This is a public declaration of intent for the journal Liminal,
volume one, number zero. That is, here's what I declare I intend for
the public to do.
*Big Nutty Fun Puzzle Page*
Get out a sheet of paper, your ruler, and a sharp writing
instrument. Make a ten by ten grid on the paper; we're creating
a crossword puzzle. I'll go from left to right, top to bottom, and I'll
tell you where to put the solid blocks, open spaces, and the little clue
numbers that will go in the upper left corners of an open space.
Remember, this is a ten by ten puzzle that has absolutely no
semblance of symmetry.
Top line: block, 1, three blocks, 2, two blocks, 3, block.
Second line: 4, two spaces, 5, 6, two spaces, 7, space, block.
Third line: 8, space, block, 9, two spaces, block, space, two blocks.
Fourth line: 10, three spaces, block, space, block, space, two blocks.
Fifth line: 11, space, three blocks, 12, three spaces, two blocks.
Sixth line: 13, space, three blocks, space, block, space, two blocks.
Seventh line: space, two blocks, 14, five spaces, block.
Eighth line: 15, two spaces, two blocks, space, block, space, block.
Ninth line: space, four blocks, space, four blocks.
Tenth line: 16, seven spaces, two blocks.
Here are the clues:
ACROSS
4. two words Liminal should strive to use
8. a Roman pair
9. opsys for real propeller heads
10. to be truly this is to be truly aware
11. ai/bi/
12. sort of erbation, especially if you are a student, an instructor,
work in a service industry, or are a politician
13. yikes
14. only salad that fits
15. type of bastard (or, see likeness to President's genitalia)
16. if Liminal fails it could be retitled this
DOWN
1. eyes too close together, as are so many egomaniacal writers
2. unknowable (duh)
3. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle truly is an idiot. Is not. Is too.
Is not. Is too. Is not. Is. Ain't. Is. Ain't. Is. Ain't....
4. big talk word
5. only tape that fits
6. sly greeting, stupid clue
7. if you are a student, an instructor, work in a service industry, or are
a politician, you must always be this
====================================================
MANIFESTO THIS . : OUR EXQUISITE CORPSE
Ben Urish
LIMINAL: NEITHER ONE "THING" NOR AN "OTHER"
They call them "urine tests." We know better. There is usually little
or no doubt that the specimen is indeed urine. That is not what is being
tested. Urine is looked to as a great giver of truths, a "Dragnet" analysis:
Just the facts. There are more days in the week than Friday. Most animals
know better. We say Urine is a liar. Urine is a stool-pigeon, a pigeon
dropping stool with every flight. The Eagle and the Pigeon are one. Pluck
them, pluck them, pluck them. They have no urine.
LIMINAL: A STATE OF CONSTANT AND CONSISTANT BECOMING
If all government sponsored school loans were paid in full tomorrow,
the nation as a whole could afford a new fighter jet and a new ABM tank.
Soon, the South American countries (God Bless Junior Achievement) will
default on their loans. We will annex Mexico to stop boarder crossings:
Mexicans will already be in the USA, so there is no reason for them to cross.
When the beings from Epsilon Bootes arrive in summer of 2011, they will
not be pleased with our "progress" God Bless Junior Achievement. Sorry
about the Aztecs. How long can a cannibalistic enterprise last? To get to
the other side.
LIMINAL: DYNAMIC DISEQUILIBRIA
American culture forces the world to a Persistence Of Mammary.
The world floats on a box of cheese, watch it next time you are there.
You can't find love in a truckload of turnips, unless it's to the stars
through Milwaukee. A corpse, a corpse, a corpse, a potato corvette. I
am Freezer Burn, you are Paper Cut. We will take vacations together,
what of our jobs when it is never Paris in the the Spring? Dance on it
until a rider in blue, with wristwatch. And he knew it all the time, until
his prenatal nuptial regressive memory. A stinging indictment of our
times, ants, the grape master.
LIMINAL: CONSTANT MOVEMENT TOWARD AN UNREALIZABLE STASIS
If it doesn't matter, do it without delay. The important will always
be there, nagging at your houseplant. You may forget the inconsequential,
unless you keep it out of sequence. In a past life, you were just as despicable
In a future life, you will be just as dull. Take comfort in the ever growing
misery, it is your creation. Torture yourself, to show others the proper way.
Scream with agony at double-stuff oreos.
LIMINAL: THE PULSING MARGINALIA
We are coerced time travelers. Each passing second takes us into t
he future. The drawback: time travel causes us to age, and eventually
lose our biological integrity. Is knowing the future worth it? The tuxedo
of desire never goes out of style, but the evening gown of domesticity is
a slave to fashion. If thy right eye offends thee, starve your pet. The
quality of mercy was found in a two-bit hotel room with truth, justice
and the American way. They were watching public executions on
television, and why not? If nude dancing is outlawed, only outlaws will
dance nude. Gum doesn't kill people, people chewing gum kills people.
Ask the boy in the ceramic jar, before he gets fired. People who need
people are the ends justifying the means. My fiance and I went to a party.
She really got stoned. So instead of a wedding, we're having a funeral.
LIMINAL: THE TREE FALLING IN THE FOREST WHEN NO ONE IS THERE
And laughed until they shot him. How many miles to Babylon? Who
gives a damn? Can we get there by candlelight? No, and please shut up.
If I were a carpenter, and you were a walrus, would you staple my
doorknobs, with jar of lettuce? Stranglers in the night, waiting for
mourning. The most honest person alive still couldn't walk to Venus.
Leonardo DaVinci never drove a car, watched tv, rode an elevator, or
phoned his Mom. I have done all of these things. Yet they call DaVinci
a genius. He is a false memory.
LIMINAL: YOU, ME, AND ALL OF US SEPARATELY AND TOGETHER, NOW AND
FOREVER, UNTO THE END OF TIME WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT. AMEN.
All power to Annette FunicelloUs aura.
liminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminal
iminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminali
minaliminaliminalimina
===========================================================
LIMINAL--THE MUSICAL
Christine J. Catanzarite
Words, words, words--I'm so sick of words. I get words all day
through, first from him, now from you. Is that all you blighters can
do? Don't talk of stars burning above. If you're in love, show me. Tell
me no dreams filled with desire. If you're on fire, show me. Never do
I ever want to hear another word. There isn't one I haven't heard.
Here we are together in what ought to be a dream. Say one more word
and I'll scream.
It ain't so much a question of not knowing what to do.
I've known what's right and wrong since I've been ten. I've heard a
lot of stories and I reckon they are true, about how girls are put upon
by men. I know I mustn't fall into the pit, but when I'm with a fella, I
forget.
No bright-eyed, blushing, breathless baby-doll baby--no sir,
that kind of child ties knots no sailor ever knew. I prefer to take a chance
on a more adult romance. I flinch, I sigh, when the lass with the delicate
air goes by. I smile, I grin, when the gal with a touch of sin walks in. I
hope and I pray for Hester to win just one more "A." The sadder but wiser
girl's the girl for me.
Mother always said I'd be very attractive when I grew up. "Different,"
she said, "with a special something and a very, very personal flair. And
though I was eight or nine, I hated her. Now, different is nice, but it
sure isn't pretty--pretty is what it's about. I never met anyone who was
different who couldn't figure that out.
So suppose a dame ain't bright
or completely free from flaws, or as faithful as a birddog, or as kind as
Santa Claus. It's a waste of time to worry over things that they have not.
Be thankful for the things they've got. There are no books like a dame,
and nothing looks like a dame. There are no drinks like a dame, and
nothing thinks like a dame. Nothing acts like a dame, or attracts like
a dame. There ain't a thing tht's wrong with any man here that can't
be cured by putting him near a girly, womanly, female, feminine dame.
Women are irrational, that's all there is to that. Their heads are
full of cotton, hay and rags. They're nothing but exasperating, irritating,
vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hags. Why
can't a woman be more like a man? Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; eternally noble, historically fair, who, when you win, will always give your
back a pat. Why can't a woman be more like that. Why does every one do
what the others do? Can't a woman learn to use her head? Why do they do
everything their mothers do? Why don't they grow up like their fathers
instead?
I'm quick on the trigger; with targets not much bigger than a
pinpoint, I'm number one. But my score with a feller is lower than the
cellar. You can't get a man with a gun. When I'm with a pistol, I sparkle
like a crystal. I shine like the morning sun. But I lose all my luster when
with a bronco buster. No, you can't get a man with a gun.
Gentleman, a
secretary is not a toy, no, my boy; not a toy to fondle and dandle a playfully
handle in search of some puerile joy. A secretary is not to be used for play
therapy. Be good to the girl you employ. Remember, no matter what neurotic
trouble you've got, a secretary is not a toy.
=================================================================
Threshold Manifesto
Liminal is the initial stage of a process of scholarly exploration,
the verge of the new, the threshold of theory, the edge of knowledge,
the blurring of boundaries, the destruction of dichotomies.
Liminal seeks to present formal and theoretical experimentation, to
publish work which challenges and invents, to illuminate the
threshold of thought.
Liminal is founded on the belief that irrationality, non-rationality,
surrealism, subrealism, the unconcious, a sense of play, and irreverence
are beneficial, even necessary, to advancing scholarly work.
Torey King
=================================================================
the paper edition featured cool collage art by Philip Dickinson
(Don't you wish you could see it?!)
=================================================================
1992: Washington State Makes Rock & Roll Illegal for Minors...Cops
in Arkansas Arrest a Kid for Wearing a Van Halen T-Shirt...Retailers
Arrested in Omaha for Selling 2 Live Crew Recordings...Are you tired
of the censors?
Speaking out is the primary duty of every freedom fighter - or good
citizen, if you want to put it that way, and scholar. It's a job we all have
to do, separately and collectively; where we see justice and where
injustice has been going on for so long it has become invisible. Silence
is a form of censorship, and when important issues are at stake, silence
is a form of death.
Here are some things we can do:
Emphasize the Positive. The censors do NOT have the right to define
the agenda and pick the battleground. Aggressively expose the
history of what censorship has done to ruin democracy in countries
all over the world.
You Don't have to Spend Your Life Living Like a Refugee. The
majority of Americans are moral; they're also in favor of free
speech. A July 1990 Newsweek poll showed that 75 percent of
Americans felt that the right of adults to "determine what they
may see and hear" was "more important" than society having
"laws to prohibit material that may be offensive to some segments
of the community."
On the Other hand, Remember This: The First Amendment exists to
protect speech and activities that are unpopular. If it only served
to protect that which everybody (or the majority) agreed with, it
wouldn't need to be there at all. Limiting free speech is what is
unAmerican - without it all our other rights and liberties quickly
disintegrate.
Don't Believe the Hype. Don't let censors claims they aren't censoring;
if it restricts freedom of expression, it's against the First Amendment.
Freedom Isn't Free. The majority of censorship is economic, which
forces artists to work day jobs to stay alive, and prevents them from
creating freely, let alone acquiring the equipment to work with and
the space to work in.
Keep Your Sense of Humor. This will immediately distinguish you
from the censors, who donUt have any. Censorship fanatics never
tell jokes about the issue; they never let the air out of their own
bags of wind. Don't be afraid to help them out - or to deflate your
own gasbag once in a while.
Remember the Commandment the Censors Forgot. "Thou shalt not
bear false witness against thy neighbors." That doesn't just mean
don't lie; it means get the facts straight. So go after those half-truths
and expose the lies the censors promote.
Don't Mourn. Accept no easy answers. Find out where attacks on
free speech are coming from - even if it means going back 100 or
500 years. It's important to see both censored and uncensored art.
Teach yourself the history of free music, free art, free cinema, etc.,
so that the lies of the censors wont trick you.
Take Advantage of Resources - telephones, fax machines,
photocopiers - wherever you can find them. It does not take an
army to make a big difference.
Contact Other Groups in Your Area that should have an interest
in free speech - not just art councils, but unions, civil rights
organizations, churches, journalists, broadcasters, feminists. Make
sure they understand the issue. Ask for their support - and support
their causes whenever you can.
Speak out. Stay free.
Michael Leo McHugh,
Associate Editor, Rock and Roll Confidential
American Culture Studies, Doctoral Candidate,
Bowling Green State University
Liminal Editorial Board
===================================================================
It all started like a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movie
Well
not exactly
instead of saying
Hey, let's put on a musical
someone said
Hey, let's start a journal
How we finally came to produce Liminal will be
I'm sure
an issue of debate for
future scholars
or the basis of a made-for-TV movie
I will say no more of the roots of Liminal
let its roots be shrouded
in mystery
I will
however
shed some light on what Liminal means to me
Use
the holistic metaphor matrix (pat.pen.)
below
like a Captain Midnight Decoder Ring
Liminal Mind Self Thought Environment
Peers Boundary Brain Ego idea
scholarship Family Border Medulla i
ME Cognition socialization Threshold Cerebellum
Synapses id Rumination Superego Initial stage
James T. Coon
============================================================
CROSSING LINES: LIMINAL MANIFESTOS
shawn p. wilbur
I
LIMINAL is about thresholds, limits. It is about crossing lines.
We do it all the time, step across boundaries.
Wake up in the morning. Pass out of a sleeping state. Get up,
breaking the horizontal plane of repose. Walk out the door.
Take a walk on the wild side.
Or it is done to us.
The gun barrel is steadied on the windowsill, piercing the plane
where a pane of glass would be if the window had not been opened.
It draws a line from inside to outside, through the wall of the Book
Depository. And there is a sound like a handclap. Something breaks
the speed of sound.
And in the motorcade, other boundaries are breached. Inside gets
outside. Bone and tissue are pushed past certain thresholds.
Something is over. Something is just beginning.
Across the border. . .
LIMINAL is about thresholds, limits, boundaries.
It is about crossing lines.
II
Mostly, I study books.
Some of the books are pretty good. ("Oh. Literature. You want the
English department. Down the hall.") Others aren't quite so "literary."
(Popular Culture. Don't they do that at Bowling Green?)
Books are produced by publishing companies, which are often very
interesting in their own right. (Business? History?) Books often
have cool pictures on the cover, and on the inside, too. (Art. Well,
maybe not "ART." Design?) And they're put together in interesting
ways. (I think you want Material Culture.)
But, best of all, books are read by people, who read them for all sorts
of reasons. (That's Psychology. Gotta be.) And sometimes they get
together to talk about them, in classrooms and at conventions. (Oh,
yeah. Sociology.)
Mostly I study books. That's simple enough. Right?
LIMINAL
all this and more.
III
It's a LIMINAL world, and welcome to it. Send no money. You will
be billed later. Everything is in flux, moving from one state to
another. Magically reifying into rock-hard hypercommodity.
Melting into air. It's the more-than-double bind of postmodernity.
Knowledge becomes product. Opposition is transformed into New &
Improved DISSENT TM. (Coming soon to a theater or drive-in near
you! Read the book! Join the religion! Collect all 14,052 action
figures! Just in time for Christmas.--Series 103: The Frankfurt
School, including Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas (#7) and many
more. Just call 1-900-CRT THRY for more information.*) This is the
marketplace of ideas--with a vengeance--and I hope you brought
your VISA, because they don't accept American Express.
(* $2.50/minute, 10 minute minimum.)
It's a LIMINAL world, and there's no such thing as a free lunch, a
free moment, a free idea. We are constantly inundated, involved,
implicated in and by the workings of the culture machine. There is
no way outside, no privileged all-encompassing critical vantage point,
no chance for utopian visions. But, at the same time, everything
seems distant, mediated, as if it was behind glass. As if it took place on
a television screen. There is, as we have been told, precious little
"here" here. All that was solid has melted and air is all that is left.
Hyperreality is the "real" condition of our lives. Or so it often seems.
It will require more than rigor, more than dialectics to get us out of
this mess, or to get us into it in some way that allows us to believe in
ourselves as effective agents. It is not exactly that we must embrace
our fragmentation, celebrate the oh-so-local, abandon utopias. But
we must acknowledge uncertainty when we see it, experience it.
LIMINAL is ultimately about uncertainty, acknowledging it and then
going on, talking about the world anyway. Articulating it. The words
that it contains are not presented as true in any perfect sense, but
they are honest attempts to engage with the world as we experience
it, perhaps to move toward something like truth.
LIMINAL positions itself in that transitional nonspace between the
solid and the melting, one foot in the cash box and one in the void.
Our ideas are sometimes half-formed, our devices may malfunction,
our packages have a tendency to come unwrapped. That's life. LIMINAL.
Moving. Crossing lines. These manifestos represent one line being
crossed, a venture begun. And they are an invitation to you. Join us,
as a reader or writer. Enter this LIMINAL space. Come out and play
with our (broken) toys.
==================================================
The Liminal Group:
Christine J. Catanzarite, James T. Coon, Philip Dickinson,
John A. Dowell, Mark Howell, Matthew Johnson, Torey King,
Michael McHugh, Ginny Schwartz, Ben Urish, Shawn P. Wilbur
(& You?)
==================================================
is dedicated to:
Spike Jones, Salvador Dali, Dr. Seuss, John Lennon, Guy Fawkes,
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Tristan
Tzara, Max Fleisher, Dave Fleisher, Charles Ives, Edgar Allen Poe,
Charles Plymel, Franz Boas, Gilbert Seldes, Siegfried Kracauer, Victor
Turner, Charles Mackay, Ruth Benedict, Edward Lear, W.S. Gilbert,
Isaac Asimov, Gore Vidal, Timothy Leary, Lewis Carroll, Leon Trotsky,
Allen Smithee, Frederic Jameson, Ray B. Browne, The Shadow, Joe
Strummer, Michael Oriard, The Four Dons (DeLillo, Dixon, Pendleton
& Barthleme), Alvin Toffler, Clint Eastwood, Adam Ant, Marshall
McLuhan, Einstuerzende Neubauten, SRL, Jack Woodford, Peggy Gaddis,
Donna Haraway, Laibach, Chuck Taylor, Erskine Caldwell, Gummo Marx
& Shemp, Chuck Jones, Bill Scott & Jay Ward, KMFDM, Dick Sargent &
Dick York, Mom, Jimmy Stewart, Liberace, Michael O'Donoghue, Bugs
Bunny, Dick Hertz, Charo, Johhny Carson, Carl Sagan, John Carpenter,
Judy Jetson, David Cronenberg, Jean Baudrillard, Arthur & Marilouise
Kroker, Gypsy Rose Lee, Kitten Natividad, Everyone Dead, Immanuel
Velikovsky, Simon Frith, Friedrich Nietszche, Stuart Hall, Gibby
Haynes & the Butthole Surfers, Abraham Zapruder, Vladmir Mayakovsky,
Chris Elliot, Spike Milligan, Richard Pryor, King Mob, the Diggers, Jan
Palach, Mindpower, Nancy Spungen, Daffy Duck, Leonard Nimoy, Annie
Sprinkle, Bryon Gysin, The Merry Pranksters, Valerie Solanas, Hunter
S. Thompson, John Coltrane, Hugo Ball, Bobby Campbell, Don Van Vliet,
Edie Sedgwick, Sandra Good, Squeaky Fromme, Sadie Mae Glutz, Sharon
Tate, Candy Asscheeks, Kim Gordon, Sally LeRoy, The Swamp Rats ('66),
Emma Peel, Negativland, No. 6, Hershell Gordon Lewis, Peter Fonda,
The Headhunters, Isaac Hyes, Arnold the Pig, Antonio Gramsci, Karl
Marx, Mikhail Bahktin, Guy Debord, Jean Genet, Alfred Jarry, Arthur
Cravan, Marcel Duchamp, Gil Scott Heron, Chuck D., Joe Friday, Maude,
Jane Caputi & her brother Rob, Karen Finley, The Slits, UT, The SLA,
Emmett Grogan, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, The Jimi
Hendrix Experience, Captain Beefheart, LBJ (for all the right reasons),
N.W.A., Public Enemy, Madonna, John Waters, Bruce Dern, Albert
Hoffmann, Patsy Cline, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Casey Kasem, Elvis
Costello, Marlo Brando, Mel Gibson, Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby,
Cindy, Mike (R.I.P.), Carol, Alice, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, Phil
Donohue, Rock Hudson, The Posies, Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn, Dave
Marsh, Greil Marcus, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, Hugh Wilson, Famous
Teddy Z, Mike Mills, Freddy Mercury, Bill Bailey, Charlie Parker, Barbara
Stanwyck, Elizabeth Montgomery, Joan Jett, Agent 99, Patti Smith, Mitzi
Gaynor, Jane Russell, Charlotte Vale, Susie Bright, My Grandmother,
Betty Boop, The Supremes, Kate Bush, Colette, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret
Atwood, Debbie Harry, Martin Scorscese, Mel Brooks, Martin Mull, Elvis,
Jorge Lius Borges, Umberto Eco, John Mellencamp, Paolo Soleri, Bruce
Springsteen, William Gibson, John Shirley, K.W. Jeter & Horatio Alger, Jr.
============================================================
The Liminal Group is dedicated to exploring the terra incognita of the
cultural map and to formulating novel approaches to the study of
popular culture.
Liminal is (becoming) a journal, a movement, a cry in the wilderness
(and you are welcome to wail along.) For more information, write to:
============================================================
The Liminal Group
Box 154, BGSU, Bowling Green, OH 43403
============================================================
Come out and play with our (broken) toys.
============================================================
1.1-electronic is in the works.
1.2-paper is *now* available for $4.00. 48pp.
(Make checks payable to The Liminal Group.)
*enjoy.* And let us know what you think.
Submissions welcome.
[email protected]
