Using a geo-socio-logical approach to Colonial, Indigenous, and Non-Western astronomical records and insight, a kind of cosmo-coloniality is engaged with.
This project begins with archeo-astronomical research on the horological significance of comets in Precolonial, Indigenous astronomy. This is one of a multitude of systems interpreting cometary phenomena across Non-Western astro-sciences and cosmologies.
In astronomical accounts of the Bapedi of Southern Africa and the Māori of Aotearoa, who, it must one day be argued, have been recorded by Westerners as having thought through a predictive science associating terrestrial matters with cometary behavior - echoing a position held by other indigenous nations impacted by colonial politics - and in particular the behavior of C/1882 R1.
The Western archive relating to the late 19th century Māori settlements in Taranaki records the appearance of C/1882 R1 and other bright comets of the decade. Cometary phenomena appears to have associations with natural disasters and the infringement of white settler expansion on Māori territories.
For the Bapedi, the appearance of C/1882 R1 was coincident with the assassination of a monarch, putting a stamp on the final blows of a continental-wide colonial expansion in the 1880s.
“Great Comet of 1882, seen from South Africa. The comet is at upper left, seen in the night sky over a landscape of plants, with natives observing.”
In both nations, what is shared with Western ethnologists is an association with C/1882 R1 as signaling a psycho-material change of pre-existing realities or conditions. Bringers starts with an intuition that couples colonial and non-colonial astronomical records to think about a colonial cosmology represented by sun grazers like C/1882 R1.
(A likely doctored) ”View of a comet in the sky above Mt Taranaki (Egmont) and Parihaka, taken 4 October 1882, by Thomas S Muir.”
The monument represents a thought recognising temporal boundaries that might be associated with C/1882 R1. What characterises the terrestrial contexts that came before and after the appearance of C/1882? What are the stages of change acknowledged by the cosmological frameworks previously mentioned, is the event of the comet sighting itself the period of change or does the period of change commence after a particular comet disappears from view. Queries like these are important for the reflective mode assumed by Bringers of the Dawn: A Herald for C/1882 R1 in its anticipation of the 2550s.
1.Bogosi Sekhukhuni, SEKUKUNY THESIS: 2 YEARS OF STUDIO https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/49222/Sekhukhuni_washington_02500_24638.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
2.A.F. Roberts, Comets Importing Change of Times and States - Ephemera and Process among the Tabwa of Zaire. American Ethnologist, 1982. 9: pp. 712-729
3.Wayne Orchiston, John Drummond, THE MOUNT TARAWERA VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN NEW ZEALAND AND MÃORI COMETARY ASTRONOMY, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Volume 22, Issue 3, 2019, Pages 521-535
4.Wayne Orchiston, John Drummond,Gary Kronk, OBSERVATIONS OF THE GREAT SEPTEMBER COMET OF 1882 (C/1882 R1) FROM NEW ZEALAND, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Volume 23, Issue 3, 2020, Pages 628-658
5.Alcock, P. G. Venus Rising: South African Astronomical Beliefs, Customs and Observations. South Africa: P.G. Alcock, 2014
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