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Paper short abstract

In Malaita, Solomon Islands, feared “devil-devil” artifacts persist despite Christian iconoclasm. Their circulation reveals how colonial racism, shame, heritage, and development collide, as ancestral objects haunt moral, economic, and spiritual life.

Paper long abstract

It is believed that on the island of Malaita, Solomon Islands, there is Satanic stuff. Despite waves of Colonial and Christian iconoclasm, a pre-Christian "Devil-Devil Culture" persists. These artifacts come from the taem bifo (time before), one of Kastom ways of being which, amongst many practices included what many see as the deeply shameful institutions of headhunting, cannibalism and human-sacrifice. Some Christians, who "backslide" into "Paganism" hide such artifacts in the woven thatch of their roofs. Others sell and often give them to outsiders, hoping that the cultural heritage of an increasingly forgotten history may survive and, perhaps one day return to a more welcoming, even celebratory environment. Evangelicals today preach that only when the last of the devil-devil culture is destroyed will Malaita develop, instantaneously and overnight becoming a tourist destination like Honolulu or a deep-sea port like Singapore. In the context of these deeply polarizing discourses of shame, development, past and future, this papers attempts an exorcism of the evangelical possession. Moving beyond demonization as a rhetorical trope, the paper treats devil-devils as indexing distinct ontological realities and historical forces, following Viveiros de Castro’s notion of “controlled equivocation.” It explores how colonial racism is manifest in Devil-Devil culture. It also asks who benefits from this shame. By tracing how ancestral objects entangle issues of economics and identity, the paper shows how the past persistently haunts the present, illuminating both the generativity of the negative and the ongoing struggles to negotiate moral and material life in a polarized world.