Spiral of Time in Potiki


Potiki is a story focusing on a Maori community fighting to maintain their autonomy from hungry land developers who are desperately trying to coerce the Maori people off of their sacred land. The author, Patricia Grace, constructs the story through a patchwork of memories, where different events, different times, and different viewpoints come together in like a mosaic.  
Grace disrupts the linear narrative and describes time in a cyclical way, a never-ending spiral. Rather than segregating time the “past time” of the ancestors from the “present time” of the community, there is a new way of describing time. I found “now-time” to be a fascinating concept, where there’s this spiral temporality where past and future time are narratively experienced. The concept of “sacred time” was more challenging to understand, where the narrative of Christ and the and the ancient myth of Mäui align.  The spiral, like kowhaiwhai, signifies repetition with a difference. Toko shares qualities with Mäui, since when he is born, he is born deformed and abandoned on the shore just like Mäui was, by his mother Mary. His gift of foresight is magical and unique, and it allows him to see the looming hand of colonialism over his community. As the novel progresses, Toko’s ability to connect to the future is something that I’m going to keep my eye on…

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