Abstract
This article analyzes the liminal space occupied by Nael, narrator-character of Milton Hatoum's novel The Brothers (2000). Son of Domingas, an indigenous woman subjugated within the Lebanese household, Nael constructs his identity based on the tension between belonging and exclusion, center and margin, recognition and erasure. The uncertainty of his paternal affiliation and his occupation of peripheral spaces shape a liminal subjectivity, marked by ambiguity and fragmentation. To support the analysis, the concepts of Homi K. Bhabha's in-between place and Édouard Glissant's rhizomatic identity are mobilized, understanding identity as a relational and unfinished construction. It is observed that Nael's narrative constitutes a gesture of symbolic reinscription, in which the marginalized subject takes the floor and reconstructs his own history from the frontier. It is concluded that the in-between place in the novel is not reduced to a space of exclusion, but operates as a critical and discursive force, revealing the cultural, social, and ethnic fractures that traverse the formation of the Lebanese family and the city of Manaus in the 20th century.