Subject: liminal 1.0
From: [email-masked] (shawn wilbur)
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1993 19:20:01 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.zines

minal 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 43402
(email c/o    [email-masked])
=======================================================
*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 spat 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 yound
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 ye 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 the
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 thewedding, 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, waiting for mourning. The most honest person
alive still couldn't walk to Venus. Leonardo DaVinci never drove a cr, 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 Funicello's aura.
liminaliminaliminalinaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminali

minaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminaliminalimina

===========================================================
LIMINAL-THE MUSICAL

 Christine J. Catanzarite

        Words, words, words-I'm so sick of words. I get words all day throughm
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. 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 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, will always give you a pat on the 
back. Why can't a woman be more like that? Why does every one do what the others
do? Why don't they grow up like their fathers instead?
                        I'm quick on the trigger; with targets not much bigger
tore 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.
                       Gentlemen! 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 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,iona irreverence are
beneficial, even necessary, to advancing scholarly work.

Torey King
=================================================================
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; whera form of censorship,
and when imphasize 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 believve 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 don't 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 finalde-for-TV movie
I will say no more of the roots of Lime

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 chanthe same time, everything seems distant, mediated, as if it was behind
glass. As if it took place on a television screen. There is, as he 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. 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 aand one in the void. Our ideas are some- times 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 crosson 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:
Guy Fawkes, Thomas
Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Tristan Tzara, Max ried 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, Marshal
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,
E& the Butthole Surfers, Abraham Zapruder, Vladmir
Mayakovsky, Chris Elliot, Spike MIlligan, Richard Pruor, King Mob, the Diggers,
Jan Palach, Mindpower, Nancy Spungen, Daffy Duck, Leonard Nimoy, Annie
SprinkBall, 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 Wa, Marlo Brancia, 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 Se 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 cultura
l map and to formulating novel approaches to the study of popular culture.

The Liminal Group is (becoming) a journal, a movement, a cry in the wilderness 
(
and you're welcome to wail along). 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 due out any day now.
*enjoy!*  And let us know what you think.
Submissions welcome.

[email-masked]