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. ======================================================= _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 swilbur@andy.bgsu.edu) ======================================================= *feel free to distribute this in hard- or soft-copy. just don't sell it.* ======================================================= 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. swilbur@andy.bgsu.edu