Transcendent Marginality

Personal Reflexive Statement

My interest in the concept of marginality was sparked over 20 years ago. Back in graduate school, after I had begun a doctoral program, I had the opportunity to return to my undergraduate alma mater to teach for one semester. This was an amazing experience, but it also brought with it some unanticipated feelings and perceptions. It was eye-opening to see more of what the “back stage” of faculty members’ jobs looked like. Of course I had a different experience with these professors and with the sociology department in general during the time that I had been an undergraduate student. At that time, I recall the professors always being very accessible and available to talk about concepts and ideas. As a student, I lacked awareness or understanding of the many facets of the role of a professor. My one-semester teaching stint gave me much greater insight into the various demands on professors. The combined experience of realizing that I perhaps had an overly idyllic view of this profession (or at least a rather incomplete view), and also finding it difficult to truly feel like it was appropriate to consider my former professors to now be colleagues, led me to the vast literature on the topic of marginality. As a doctoral student teaching full time at a university, I felt somewhat “between statuses”—a feeling that was heightened given that I was teaching in the same department where my former professors and mentors were located. Reading about the sociological concept of marginality helped me to make sense of my own situation at that time. There is much to explore when examining marginality on the basis of many dimensions (e.g., race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexuality). I find it fascinating to explore the ways that people navigate their marginality, and I’m especially drawn to the potentially liberating aspects of occupying a marginal position. It is from this backdrop that I wish to invite consideration of a new concept: transcendent marginality.

Transcendent Marginality

Marginality is an old concept with continued relevance. The term marginal comes from the Medieval Latin, “marginalis,” pertaining to an edge. As Goldberg (2012) notes, sociologist Robert Park (1928), who coined the term “marginal man”, referred to the marginal person as a “cultural hybrid.” Georg Simmel used the phrase “the stranger” in reference to the marginal person and suggested that one in such a position is, to some extent, emancipated, as he or she is not bound by one set of rules. Everett Hughes considered marginality in the context of role conflicts and status, extending application of the concept to occupations. Much has been written about the concept, and the lived experience, of marginality. The term most commonly has a pejorative connotation, and it may bring to mind related concepts that are also pejorative—for example, anomie, alienation, and stigma. On the contrary, more positive reformulations have been offered, as I will discuss in this essay.

Either/or binary thinking is giving way to both/and thinking. While the West has toyed with ideas from Eastern philosophy in the past, there is now emerging a broader movement, perhaps not intentionally, but as realizations of the shortcomings of binary thinking are recognized. While there remains evidence of a craving for simplicity—that is, falling back on either/or thinking—there is also a higher calling for fuller understanding and appreciation for nuance, inclusivity, and hybridity. This lays the groundwork for what I am calling transcendent marginality. In the following, I present a number of positive reformulations of marginality. A domain assumption I hold is that studying marginality brings us to some very fundamental maxims—for example, it speaks to human beings’ need for inclusion and also to our tendencies toward social comparison. What is the “take away”? We find that the benefit of reframing the concept opens us to alternative ideas/meanings.

Anthropologist Victor Turner (1967) identifies liminality as the second stage in a rite of passage. For the liminar, full membership in a status has not yet been realized. The individual is “betwixt and between.” This liminal period provides one an opportunity for, or standpoint from which, the normative order can be called into question. In this way, those who occupy a marginal position may “become radical critics of structure” (Bohannan and Glazer 1988:505). Turner called for looking “in the interstices, niches, intervals, and on the peripheries of the social structure” (Bohannan and Glazer 1988:526).

Jane Bennett (2014) suggests that there are two possible responses to cultural marginality: Whereas “encapsulated marginality” is characterized by one feeling trapped and unsure of his or her identity, constructive marginality is characterized by one feeling authentic and having a strong sense of identity. This constructive marginality is made possible by the individual resolving issues that arise from being between two (or more) cultures. In short, the individual recognizes knowledge and skills that have been gained through the experiences of being in a culturally marginal position and can exercise agency in selecting the appropriate frame of reference in making decisions and in constructing an authentic identity.

Criminologist Jeff Ferrell (2012) has reconceptualized David Matza’s (1964) concept of drift, referring to people who are spatially and geographically dislocated. For those who are “cast adrift,” Ferrell sees an opportunity for transgression—that is, “a crossing over, a breaching of boundaries established by law, custom, or morality” (p. 250). Echoing Simmel’s “stranger” and Turner’s “liminar,” Ferrell sees, in the “drifter,” “the potential for living and learning beyond the usual bounds of the social order…the drifter sees social and cultural contradictions, and in seeing them is freed from them—at least for a while” (p. 251).

Extending this notion further, hooks (1999) has declared marginality as a site of resistance. In this sense, not only is one able to recognize cultural contradictions but one can also use that recognition as a catalyst for social change. Occupying a marginal position presents an opportunity to critique the current state of affairs and to “see and create,” to “imagine alternatives, new worlds” (p. 150). Marginality can thus be a force for creativity, discovery, and perhaps even revolution.

Riesman (1954) made reference to what he called secret marginality, which he described as occurring when the person subjectively fails to feel the identity expected. Riesman acknowledges the possibility that one’s marginality can be experienced in a positive way. He suggests that “we tend all too often in social science to look only at the punishing aspects of such phenomena as alienation, marginality, and social mobility” (p. 159). He offers a hypothetical example:

Think, for instance, of the enjoyment some theologians derive from skating on the thin ice of their orthodoxy, while at the same time embracing avant-garde movements of thought; such men seem almost to have consciously sought out the most precarious margins one could find in the society; they are challenged, as well as tortured, by the intellectual reconciliations they must constantly make…. (p. 159)

From the backdrop of noting that there is debate over whether marginality facilitates intellectual creativity or is instead an obstacle because the marginal person isn’t able to reap the benefits of being at the center in the production of knowledge, McLaughlin (2001) offers the concept of optimal marginality. He does this through a case study of Erich Fromm’s contributions to psychoanalysis, demonstrating how ideas that were at the margins of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory moved to the center over the course of several decades. McLaughlin credits Fromm with creating intellectual and institutional space for revisions to the theory. He contends that:

Fromm’s important role in the modern revision of psychoanalysis can largely be explained…by his optimal marginality relative to the competing camps of mid-century Freudian theorists. Fromm challenged central aspects of the symbolic core of the Freudian belief system, as one theorist among a larger grouping of unorthodox psychoanalysts concerned with moving Freudian theory beyond the dogma that had been created out of Freud’s original vision. (p. 278)

Building from these reconceptualizations of marginality, I wish to offer my own: transcendent marginality. This may be akin to Kitsuse’s tertiary stigma whereby one embraces his or her stigmatizing identity. Yet I think of transcendent marginality as a broader concept that suggests not only that those who find themselves in a marginal position can surpass or exceed limitations, but also those who are more at the center (rather than the periphery) also see beyond the confines of the margin and embrace—or at least recognize—the various places or statuses others occupy, without judgment. Drawing from Goffman, “the own” would consist of those who share a particular marginal position/identity, while “the wise” are those who don’t share that position/identity but who seek to genuinely understand those who do.

The notion of going beyond limits is implied in many of the reconceptualizations of marginality. Capturing this potential with the term, transcendent marginality, more deliberately draws attention to the emancipatory potential of marginality that Simmel (and others) have emphasized. Transcendent marginality refers to the capacity to develop a broader view, made possible when one looks beyond the static, and status quo social structure. And that broader view can be a catalyst for overcoming barriers, inviting dialogue, and inspiring hope! In the immortal words of John Lennon: “Some say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one.”