Heretical Statements: An Autoethnohraphic Story Regarding One Doctoral Dissertation on the Anthropology of Opera

Abstract

In this paper the author presents in self-reflexive manner a confession, which has not yet been told or completely written but is true, and it’s about some specific academic, research, epistemological and social circumstances in which the first doctoral dissertation on anthropology of opera was produced and perceived in Slovenia. In order to obtain pertinent information about this "exotic work", the author will present its motives for anthropological research on opera, and then further offer a brief topography of this unfavorable doctoral dissertation, in epistemological sense, that immediately earned heretical status in some Slovenian academic circles. As such, this dissertation produced truly unusual forms of reception, such as ban, resistance, distancing, ignoring and similar practices, especially with traditionally oriented music researchers and dominant operatic experts, who actually had a scientific monopoly over the subject. After more than a decade of its creation, it is time for the author of this "famous" dissertation to finally uncover that "heretical essence" of his "anthropology of opera".