Passages from van Gennep to the Present Day/Passages de van Gennep a Nos Jours (Arnold van Gennep) (Essay‪)‬

Both polysemic and paradoxical, the concept of "passage" appears to remain essential for understanding the non-precedented transformations (deracination, migration, and secularisation) taking place in the contemporary world. Rooted in the Latin patior (to suffer, undergo, experience), the word "passage", indicates a displacement, a process of transformation undertaken, that is not yet finished. It designates equally "the site where this process, its mark or its support are enacted whatever its morphological or metaphorical sense" (La Soudiere 2000: 5). The concept of "passage" indicates the metamorphosis preceding change, disorder followed by order, a state between order and disorder. As with bereavement, the sense of passing can not be reduced to mere loss, because the death it implies is symbolic and necessary for the renewal of life.