INTRODUCTION: TĀ-VĀ (TIME-SPACE): THE BIRTH OF AN INDIGENOUS MOANA THEORY

Pacific Studies Journal

INTRODUCTION: Tā-Vā (Time-Space): The Birth of an Indigenous Moana Theory

INTRODUCTION: Tā-Vā (Time-Space): The Birth of an Indigenous Moana Theory

INTRODUCTION: Tā-Vā (Time-Space): The Birth of an Indigenous Moana Theory

THE DISPUTE between ontology (ways of being) and epistemology (ways of knowing) is a dispute over reality as it is and reality as we know it. The issue is, therefore, not how you know what you know, nor when you know what you know, nor where you know what you know, nor why you know what you know, but rather what you really know.

In paradoxical ways, it is, in the Moana, symbolically thought that people walk forward into the past and, contemporaneously, walk backward into the future, both in the present, where the elusive, already-taken-place past and illusive, yet-to-take-place future are, and in the social process, constantly mediated in the ever-changing present.

In historical ways, however, it logically follows that the past, which has stood the test of time-space, is placed in the front of people in the present as guidance, and the unknown future is located in their back in the present, informed by past experiences, with the past and future permanently negotiated in the conflicting present.