This paper offers an alternative approach to the essential matter of the factors involved in the process of waiting, especially in critical contexts such as civil emergencies. Some categories for the analysis of waiting are developed here, taking an alternative theoretical perspective, where waiting processes are conceived of as operational and institutionalised in nature, rather than mere temporal phenomena. Importantly, this paper contributes to research in the field of anthropology studying processes of waiting, as it presents a unique perspective of analysis. This perspective shifts the focus of these processes from temporalities to institutions and highlights the essential importance of operations in their analysis. In order to exemplify the proposed perspective, empirical waiting processes in crisis will be analysed. These examples of critical waiting have been selected with consideration to their historical, political or social impact. The demand for operational behaviour among the people waiting has also been considered in these examples. These processes will be analysed using categories established from an institutional and operational approach based on the materialistic philosophical approach of the Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno Martinez, sometimes called Discontinuous Materialism.

Recent trends in contemporary horror TV present queer women as Western media’s latest anti-hero, foregrounding presentations of hyper-femininity as central to queer women’s violence. I examine how representations of ‘violent lesbians’ are used by viewers to aid in shaping and understanding their own identities. Drawing on fashion theory as well as Barbara Creed’s concept of the ‘monstrous feminine’ to examine the role depictions of hyper-femininity play in both highlighting and undermining women’s power, I present a textual analysis of two queer horror shows – Ratched (2020–) and Killing Eve (2018–2022) – alongside discussions with fans via focus groups and interviews. I examine how these shows represent queerness and femininity in relation to violent women, and how women and non-binary individuals collectively create meaning out of these representations. I argue that while these shows present viewers with alternative images of femininity, they also reinforce certain gender norms, supporting dominant power structures that present a restrained image of queer women’s deviancy, and one that is not available to all bodies. Viewers critically engage with this material, utilising these shows to expand their own understandings and expressions of identity, while also challenging the shows’ limitations.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a life-shortening genetic condition involving progressive muscular wasting for which there is no hope of recovery at present. The lives of people with DMD, cherished by their families, are systematically marginalised and undervalued by healthcare bureaucracies while enrolment in clinical trials of new treatments offers possibilities of longer-term biomedical solutions. How is hope preserved under such circumstances and what activities can promote a full and meaningful life for those with DMD Ethnographic research within the DMD community in Aotearoa New Zealand provided a basis for addressing these questions and for understanding different concepts of hope and social suffering, the value of life in DMD and disability studies, and how these are shaped by regimes of governmentality.

Hapū are interested in local government due to their decision-making influence over the cultural, social, economic and environmental wellbeing of a district that can enable or restrict tino rangatiratanga. In Aotearoa, the debate about Indigenous engagement in local government is shaped by Te Tiriti o Waitangi responsibilities to protect and promote the interests of hapū. There is currently a major review of local government underway, which is providing a once-in- a-generation opportunity to have a courageous conversation about the future of this sector. This paper presents a Critical Tiriti Analysis (CTA) examining to what extent He mata whāriki, he matawhānui–the local government draft review report–has engaged with te Tiriti. It includes a postscript on the final report released while this paper was under review. In the draft report we found variable engagement. It was strongest regarding relationships and governance and weaker in relation to tino rangatiratanga, ōritetanga (equitable citizenship) and wairuatanga (spiritual domain). This review challenges local and regional government to lift their game in relation to their te Tiriti responsibilities and concludes that local Māori solutions, mātauranga Māori knowledge and leadership are required at all levels of local and regional government. National states of emergency and devastating disasters in the context of Cyclone Gabrielle will no longer wait for the bureaucracy of the local government.

Following natural disasters in urban environments, those who remain are left not only to occupy an unfamiliar space but also to experience a painfully drawn out temporality: the time of waiting. A decade after earthquakes struck Christchurch city, some residents are still inhabiting a time of limbo, awaiting decisions on the fate of their homes and businesses. In this paper, I examine various creative projects that appeared in exposed and vacant sites in post-earthquake Christchurch. These projects turned such sites into dwelling spaces in which passers-by are encouraged to hesitate and linger. Such sites thus encourage people to experience the temporality of waiting, but in a different and I argue more enabling way. This paper examines the ethical possibilities that emerge from lingering before such sites. Drawing on the notion that ethics is not so much a normative procedure and more an impetus that opens up the space of the encounter, I argue that when Cantabrians tarry before such sites, they recognise a world which is not constituted by replaceable objects, but, instead, in their responsiveness, they experience a self that is constituted by its immersion in the world. Keywords: natural disaster; waiting; temporality; Christchurch earthquakes; ethical responsiveness

Australian settler fiction and poetry stage shifting notions of temporality in relation to bushfires. The fire was an important plot device in settler writing, initially adding a touch of local colour for readers back home in England through stories of melodramatic rescue. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, understandings of fire had begun to change, as settlers began to learn that fires were not simply one-off catastrophes, but rather they were recurring phenomena. Underpinning my arguments with theories of affect, in particular Brian Massumi’s work on ‘fear of future fire’ and the philosopher Alexander Bain’s work on trauma, I argue that as settlers became increasingly conscious of the cyclicality of bushfires, their understandings of time and its relation to landscape altered. Realist writing responded to this deepening knowledge of the Australian environment, and instead of emphasizing the fleeting drama of a fire, fiction began to focus on its seasonal return. These stories and poems highlight the extreme vigilance that accompanies heightened knowledge and memories of the land. We see characters waiting for fires to arrive in scenes that are often agonizing in their slow pace, leaving them caught, as Barbara Eckstein expresses it, ‘between bushfire and approaching’ (Eckstein 2014, 256). Yet we also see bushfires, both actual and anticipated, accumulate memories of fires that have come before, and the devastation they have caused. Memory and nostalgia play important and complicated roles in attempts to mediate and manage the Australian landscape, exposing the fiction of a land that could be tamed or pastoralized to become just like the home settlers had left behind. Drawing on the fire historian Tom Griffiths’ notion of the amnesia that enables survivors of bushfires to return to the site of the blaze and to build anew, I examine representations of characters who doggedly rebuild their old lives. In particular, I consider the fraught nature of ‘willed amnesia’ or the denial of the reality that fire will return, while also considering connections between memory and place. Keywords: bushfires; memory; disaster; fear; Australian settler culture

At the core of this contribution are reflections about catastrophe in the context of the coral reef communities of eastern Sulawesi, and about modes of thinking, imagining, understanding, and being-in-relation. To that end, the writing unsettles and challenges expectations of a stable point of view from which catastrophic events, which are inseparable from how they are conceived, might be overseen. Local sayings and transregional scholarship regarding those say-ings offer a vital repository of knowledge and ways of knowing that is integral to this work. A proverb, Sama tales, and multiple narratives of the volcanic eruptions on the island of Una-Una foreground the navigation of change and impermanence by the communities and creatures of land and sea that inhabit the surrounding waters. The author, a philosopher, poet, and diver, begins the composition gazing upward from within the currents, as the reef awakens just before dawn. Keywords: reef communities; Sulawesi; proverb; volcanic eruption; living-through

The introduction to this special section notes the wide range of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields that have begun to address questions of disaster, including questions of time, or temporality, that emerge in relation to definitions, understandings, and experiences of disaster. Following a discussion of selected scholarly works that focus on the role of arts, creative activities, or more generally aesthetic considerations in relation to disaster experiences, including ethical as well as formal or technical challenges facing the representation of disaster, the three essays that make up this special section are introduced. The three essays explore questions of temporality that emerge in the context and aftermath of ‘environmental’ disaster — Australian bushfires, the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010–11, and reef ruins of eastern Sulawesi. More specifically, they address the ways that aesthetic responses to, or treatment of, disaster in creative arts both reveal and refigure disaster temporalities in affective terms, often with ethical implications. Keywords: disaster, environment, temporality, art, affect

Recent upheaval in racism debates across western countries is exemplified in New Zealand in the decision to compulsorily teach Māori histories in schools. Until recently this history has been largely marginalised and ignored by settlers/Pākehā who maintained a belief in histories which served to legitimise the Pākehā position of power. Earlier analyses have identified how the media has maintained normative Pākehā dominance and power through a consistent dissemination of a limited set of racist discourses. Our thematic and discursive analysis explores how media that embrace Māori histories (9 media items published 1 April 2019 to 30 September 2019) work to provide discursive resources for Pākehā in navigating the current debates. A process of hard work followed by transformation into an enlightened future was identified as a pathway for Pākehā to navigate the current upheaval and construct a ‘good’ Pākehā identity. The construction of a racist Pākehā outgroup works as a comparison to emphasise the ‘good’ Pākehā as ideal, and to assign blame for past and present racism. Our analysis demonstrates that despite overtly positive coverage, media accounts can still work to maintain Pākehā centrality and side-line or render invisible structural racism and Pākehā privilege. Keywords: te Tiriti o Waitangi; colonialism; media studies; discourse analysis; New Zealand history

In November 2019, three academics from Auckland University published an opinion piece in which they examined the relationship between science and mātauranga Māori. They concluded that, ‘Mātauranga Māori…subverts those aspects of science – namely objectivity, universality, and dedication to progress – that can further advance the understanding of nature and help find solutions to the major problems afflicting the planet.’ Part One of this paper examines the assumptions behind that conclusion and the sources of information used by the authors to construct their argument. It uncovers a fabric of wilful distortion, fabrication, omission, false comparisons and hyperbole. Part Two then addresses one of the major problems currently affecting the planet – the loss of biodiversity – and finds that the above-mentioned authors’ assumptions about science, indigenous knowledge and the planet’s problems are contradicted by the current global scientific consensus.