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Paper short abstract

In West Papua, Asmat rituals animate an underground cosmos as a centre of sovereignty. Rejecting linear progress, its cyclical temporality challenges governance and theology, revealing power beyond modern cartographies.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how the Asmat underground in West Papua reconfigures notions of centre and periphery through cosmological endurance and ritual resurgence. Often framed as marginal within Indonesian governance and Catholic theology, the underground emerges as a vital centre of sovereignty during longhouse (jee) inaugurations. These rituals revive an immanent cosmos where ancestral and metahuman presences animate social life, challenging transcendental frameworks that separate sacred from mundane. Rather than a nostalgic return, the underground asserts its autonomy as a withdrawn yet potent object, shaping politics and ethics alongside and beyond bureaucratic and ecclesial structures. Its temporality contrasts with linear development and state chronologies: cyclical, recursive, and resistant to closure. This layered temporality positions the underground as a site of asynchronous sovereignty, a smoldering force that exceeds official recognition. By foregrounding the underground as a cosmopolitical centre, I argue that what counts as peripheral is contingent on temporal and ontological frames. The Asmat case invites anthropological reflection on how places deemed marginal endure as centres of power, not through infrastructure or capital, but through ritual intensities and cosmological depth that destabilise dominant cartographies of governance and modernity.