Mother Mary and ‘Crisis of Time’ in post-conflict Bougainville

Most national myths of origin in Europe and elsewhere in the world begin with some transcendent or sacrificial story of violent revolution, warfare or liberation, like the French Revolution. This is also true for the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, a region in Papua New Guinea traumatized by a decade-long secessionist war (1988–1998), struggling to become an independent nation by 2027. In this article, I will draw upon François Hartog’s concept of ‘crisis of time’ to reveal how, in Bougainville, the crisis and its aftermath generated (at least) two concurrent temporalities, one of conflict and trauma, and one of waiting, that signify the breakdown of the old colonial regime and the ensuing ‘crisis of time’ that people in Bougainville currently find themselves in. In this particular experience of present-ness, past experiences are overwhelmingly haunting, while futures are often hard to envision. As a result, the flow of time is blocked, inert and stagnant. Yet, Mary, the Mother of Christ, recurrently breaks into this crisis of time, creating temporal rifts that enable people to hope and aspire, and as such, make time flow again in the direction of an anticipated independent future.