Embryonic Stem Cells and Turner's Rites of Passage

[Joseph Falcon-Freeman]

Has anyone ever noticed that Turner's elaboration of Van Gennep's ritual structure is perfectly homologous with the process of harvesting stem cells?

The potential of embryonic stem cells comes from their undifferntiatedness; they are called pluripotent (they can become any of many things). The cells are literally sucked out (separated) from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst and placed into a petri dish. These cells are separted from their original genetic context and placed into this liminal space of what Turner called 'pure possibility' and are then developed into specific, determinate cells (such as neural or muscluar cells) - reaggregated.

I find this odd.

[John McCreery]

Why odd? In part what you are seeing is a tripartite structure as old as Aristotle: Events tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But there is more here. The cells are not only separated and isolated in the liminal space of the petri dish. There they are treated in ways that stimulate development into new types of cells — just as initiands in rites of passage receive the instruction/treatments that transform them into new beings, occupying new statuses, when reinserted into the structure of society.

The same could be said, of course, of their similarity to iron ore in a blast furnace. The ore is extracted from the ground in which it is found. Transferred to the blast furnace it occupies a liminal space in which it is transformed, stripped of impurities left over from its former existence, then, in the rites of reincorporation, cast, forged or machined into its new status as, for example, an auto part.

How many other instances are there of processes that take the form: extract -> treat -> finish in a new form?

[Joseph Falcon-Freeman]

Well, what I am most interested in this analogy is not just the tripartite structure, but the peculiarities of the middle stage. The iron example works also, but I think not as well. This is because the embryonic stem cells are discrete entities (you can point at each of them under a microscope) and yet they are indeterminate. This is different from iron in a furnace, for example, because in this case of course there is simply a mass of metal, which is only afterwards differentiated into determinate objects.

Interestingly, the difference between these two analogies seems to point towards two different ways of reading Turner and perhaps towards some of the problems in Turner. In the iron example the liminal entity is a homogenous mass; in the stem cell example there is a group of separate objects which are identified with each other because of similarly being 'between' structures. I feel like some of Turner's critics might implicitly assume the former analogy; whereas the later is a slightly more precise heuristic understanding...

[John McCreery]

I feel like some of Turner's critics might implicitly assume the former analogy; whereas the later is a slightly more precise heuristic understanding...

Excellent. Hadn't thought of that, but it feels right to me. "Communitas" may suggest an undifferentiated whole; but however reduced to a common humanity, the initiands remain individuals. Is this also true of stem cells? Is there variation in how well the "initiation" works, with some more successfully transformed than others?