Liminal Social Drama

Description

Barry Kort:

"Cultural Anthropologist Victor Turner studied the ritual cultural practices that kicked into play whenever some kind of political conflict or disagreement arose within a tribal community.

According to Turner, conflict gives rise to a Liminal Social Drama that replays the original conflict until some kind of resolution is crafted.

The Liminal Social Drama (what we sometimes call political debate in our modern culture) had a remarkable structure that Turner called Anti-Structure.

That is, the Liminal Social Drama reprises the original conflict in inverse chronological order, as it reaches back to diagnose the roots of the emergent conflict. Once the roots of the conflict have been uncovered, revealed, and understood, the Liminal Social Drama can be recrafted and rewritten with an alternative ending, converting the arc of the story from an arresting, lamentable tribal tragedy to a rollicking, ritual communal comedy." (http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/2007/06/chiastory.html)