Between the Threshold and the Table: Liminal Spaces, Third Spaces, and the Architecture of Becoming
Monday, May 5, 2025
We are not always home, nor always gone. Some of the most important moments in our lives happen in the hallway.
This is the strange territory of liminal space—not here, not there, but between. You’ve been here before. Maybe you didn’t have a name for it, but you felt it in your bones.
It’s the airport at 3 a.m., the months between the diagnosis and the treatment plan, the awkward first weeks after a breakup when the bed feels too big and the world too small.
Liminal space is the threshold. It is the place where identity is unstitched, reality destabilized, and the old rules no longer apply.
Victor Turner (1969) wrote of it as a “betwixt and between” zone, where the self is disassembled in preparation for reassembly.
There is no furniture in this room. You are not supposed to get comfortable. You are meant to pass through, not unpack.
But not all in-between spaces are empty or disorienting.
Some are richly furnished with contradiction, stocked with the tools of synthesis. These are third spaces—and they don’t ask you to choose between here or there. They invite you to sit at the table and make something new.
Liminal: The Space of Undoing
Liminal space, by its very nature, is temporary. Think of it as a psychological vestibule: a place where the social order is suspended, and you are no longer who you were, but not yet who you will become.
Adolescents live here. Grief lives here. So do midlife crises and spiritual awakenings and career pivots and relationship breakups.
The danger of liminality is its void.
Stay too long and it stops being a space of transformation. It becomes a holding pattern, a waiting room without a receptionist. For many, especially in a culture obsessed with progress and identity, the ambiguity of liminality is unbearable.
And yet, something sacred happens here. To be undone is the prerequisite for becoming. We cannot be remade without rupture.
Third Space: The Place of Becoming
Enter the third space. Unlike liminality, which deconstructs, the third space reconstructs.
It is where the old and the new sit across from one another and share stories. Philosopher and cultural theorist Homi Bhabha (1994) described it as the space where hybrid identities emerge—not as compromises, but as creations.
In a world addicted to binaries—East vs. West, tradition vs. innovation, mine vs. yours—the third space says: Why not both? And more?
Third space isn’t neutral. It’s alive with tension.
But that tension is productive, not paralyzing. Consider the therapist’s office, where two partners with diverging narratives meet in a shared room to write a new one. Or the bilingual child who fluently codeswitches between worlds.
Or the interfaith couple that lights both candles and incense.
These are not confused or fragmented people. They are composite beings, forged in spaces that welcome complexity.
From Either/Or to Both/And
The philosophical shift here is profound. If liminality is the crucible, third space is the forge. We need both.
Liminal space challenges the ego. It says: you are not what you thought you were. It strips. It suspends. It humbles.
Third space offers the tools of reformation.
It says: you do not have to return to what you were. You can be something new. It integrates. It imagines. It blesses contradiction.
In families, relationships, and even democracies, these two spaces must dance.
We must allow for the uncertainty of liminal periods, where the old order dissolves and the self is unmoored.
But we must also build third spaces—psychological, cultural, and literal—where reordering can occur with grace and generativity.
What Kind of Space Are You In?
Here’s a question not often asked in the clamor of our improvement-obsessed culture: Are you supposed to be building something right now—or simply dissolving?
Much suffering comes from confusing the two. Trying to "build" while you're still dissolving only leads to anxiety.
Trying to "dissolve" when it's time to synthesize leads to stagnation.
In therapy, in family, in life—we need discernment about where we are standing.
Liminal space says: Wait here. You are not ready yet. Let the old self burn down.
Third space says: Come, sit. Bring all your paradoxes. Let’s make a delicious and memorable meal out of it.
Final Thoughts: The Threshold and the Hearth
There is a reason doors open into rooms.
The threshold is not the enemy of the room, and the room is not the enemy of the threshold. One prepares you. The other receives you.
If you are undone, may your undoing be tender.
If you are rebuilding, may your architecture be generous.
And may you always know the difference between the place you must pass through and the place you are finally safe to call home.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Gutierrez, K., Baquedano-López, P., & Tejeda, C. (1999). Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 6(4), 286–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039909524733
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Aldine Publishing.
Van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage (M. B. Vizedom & G. L. Caffee, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1909)