Epilogue

Abstract

The epilogue re-caps the arguments presented in the previous chapters, and revisits Bakhtin’s idea of the chronotope as an analytic terminology for an anthropology of history. The epilogue argues that a comparative approach to indigenous revitalization projects in post-Soviet secular Buryatia reveals the contingent and creative nature of human conceptions of time and space, and the productive capacity of ritual. The chronotopes indexed in rituals exist as negotiated, contingent, performative evocations of pasts that continuously produce Buryats as subjects in the present. The epilogue also reminds readers that all the previous chapters are linked by the way in which contemporary Buryats emphasize materiality as proof for belief, and argues that this is a secular conception that undergirds contemporary Siberian religious practices. The materiality of ritual appears to participants to exceed its explanations, grounding revived post-Soviet religious practice in a secular discourse of evidentiary proof.