ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the idea of infinity as an ethnographic concept that fruitfully evokes that cycle. Infinity is both a spatial and temporal trajectory. The chapter shows that the difference in funerary practices meets differences in origin narratives and should be understood as a tendency to what James Fox called a ‘celebration of spiritual differentiation’ which he argues to be widespread across Southeast Asia and the Austronesian world. It examines the role of ‘radical’ diversity between origin narratives in Timor-Leste as an ethnographic perspective on ways of experiencing history. The chapter explores the value of difference as a chain in the understanding of historicity for the Timorese, and the entanglements between spiritual differentiation and subsequent configurations of sociality in contemporary Timor-Leste. Several ethnographies written in different historical periods have shown how origin narratives express key features of life and its diverse origin in Timor-Leste.
