Aspects of Liminality in Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's The Dancers Dancing

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In this essay I refer Eilis Ni Dhuibhne’s narrative construction of the main characters and the theme of the novel The Dancers Dancing, in the context of the anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept of liminality. Thus the summer in the Gaeltacht that five teenage girls experience, can be understood as a depiction of the liminal phase in a rite of passage. Ni Dhuibhne’s differently constructed characters enlighten different aspects of liminality and through the céilí dance their experiences are exposed. Furthermore this essay suggests that Julia Kristeva’s notion of the chora, which can be associated to dance, is also relevant when describing the unbounded and unlimited process that radically can reform social structures. I conclude that the liminal space offers an area of many possibilities. It functions as a free zone where the main characters can f...