Defence of Toms Ķencis' PhD Theses "A Disciplinary History of Latvian Mythology" on October 5th, 2012

This dissertation is a treatise upon the knowledge production process within the field of mythology research, located between folkloristics, history and studies of religion. The author of the thesis defines and applies methodology of reflexive historiography, as such having its roots in post-modern and post-structural discourses, linguistic anthropology, critical studies of culture, and sociology of science. The analysis is focussed on institutional, scholarly knowledge production, exploring bi-directional relationships between causes and effects in texts and practices concerning the geographically and linguistically constructed object of research - Latvian mythology.

Mapping the density of intertextual links and similarities in extra-textual - institutional, political, societal contexts - the author has defined several research traditions of Latvian mythology. The first is a discursive formation of pre-institutional scholarly cum poetical emergence of textual productions upon the subject matter until the World War I. The second research tradition developed in Latvia during the interwar period. Further several parallel research traditions are defined analysing the post-war period scholarship: taking place in academia of Soviet Latvia, within the community of exile Latvian researchers, in the circles of Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics. Latvian mythology is also located as a constitutive part of broader research projects concerning Proto-Indo-European and Baltic mythologies. In-depth analysis illustrates dynamics of reconstructions of mythological space, but comparison of Latvian and Estonian scholars and their works demonstrates the similarities determined by impact of external factors on knowledge production process.