The dark side of the taiga. The relations between the people and the land in Tofalariya

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to make a multi-faceted anthropological analysis of selected narratives concerning the ways of experiencing the taiga in the context of local hunting practices used by representatives of the Tofalar community. Tofalars are one of the smallest indigenous ethnic groups in Russia (ca. 800 people). They live in three villages in the eastern part of the Sayan range in the Irkutsk region. Their way of life is connected with the surrounding environment, which in this case is the mountain taiga. My field studies indicate that the inhabitants of Tofalaria experience the taiga in a way that is difficult to describe in the light of Western epistemology based on an anthropocentric perspective. In analysing this problem, I use the work of modern anthropologists who are trying to develop a new anthropological approach, in which the human being is not in a privileged position (e.g. Tim Ingold, Viveiros de Castro, Łukasz Smyrski). The second point of reference for me is the work of contemporary philosophers, associated with the current of speculative realism, which combines a critical attitude to anthropocentrism and frequent references to the category of ‘dark’ (e.g. Timothy Morton’s dark ecology, Ben Woodard’s dark vitalism).