San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research 2009 The rise of Mormon cultural history and the changing status of the archive Joseph M. Spencer San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Spencer, Joseph M., "The rise of Mormon cultural history and the changing status of the archive" (2009). Master's Theses. 3729. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.umb6-v8ux https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3729 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE RISE OF MORMON CULTURAL HISTORY AND THE CHANGING STATUS OF THE ARCHIVE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the School of Library and Information Science San Jose State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Library and Information Science by Joseph M. Spencer August 2009 UMI Number: 1478575 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dissertation Publishing UMI 1478575 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ©2009 Joseph M. Spencer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY The Undersigned Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled THE RISE OF MORMON CULTURAL HISTORY AND THE CHANGING STATUS OF THE ARCHIVE by Joseph M. Spencer APPROVED FOR THE SCHOOL OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE Dr-rDebra Hansen" \ School of Library and Information Science Date Sch'oof 01 Library and Information Science Date ?/?/(?? Judith Weedman School of Library and Information Science Date APPROVED FOR THE UNIVERSITY gfofef Associate Dean 1 Office of Graduate and Research Studies Date ABSTRACT THE RISE OF MORMON CULTURAL HISTORY AND THE CHANGING STATUS OF THE ARCHIVE by Joseph M. Spencer This thesis analyzes the historiographical methodologies of four historians of Mormonism associated with three distinct historiographical movements: Fawn McKay Brodie, Leonard J. Arrington, Jan Shipps, and Richard Bushman. The first major work of each of these historians of Mormonism is mined analytically and then subjected to a theoretical reflection in order to establish the historian's relationship to the archive. In the concluding chapter, the various archivologies unearthed are compared and analyzed through an engagement of four contemporary French philosophers who have written on the archive: Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, Alain Badiou, and Jacques Ranciere. A theory of the "immanent archive" is set forth. Conclusions are drawn, primarily at the theoretical level, about the complex relationship between archival policy and historiographical method. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My gratitude is due first and foremost to my wife, Karen, whose love has sustained my efforts, and whose rigor has forced me again and again to redouble my efforts. My gratitude, along with an apology, goes also to my children, who have been very understanding when they want to play but "Daddy is writing." I owe a particular thanks to all those who have helped me in terms of my research and in the development of my argument. Here I owe a great debt to my thesis committee chair, Debbie Hansen, whose excitement about this project did more for my work than she will ever know. I would also like to thank, in this regard, the many scholars interested in the strange connection between Mormonism and Continental (and post- Continental) philosophy, variously associated with the LDS-Hermeneutics e-mail list, the Mormon Theology Seminar, and Mormon Scholars in the Humanities. Constant discussion with many of these scholars has been a principal resource for much of my thinking. In particular, I would like to thank Jim Faulconer, who arguably started me down this road when he introduced me to the work of Paul Ricoeur in 2004. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, whose exemplary steadiness has been a strength for me throughout this project; my wife's parents, whose material support and encouragement have been infinitely vital to my work; and Phil and Lynn Jarvis, who allowed me to borrow their home for a week of seclusion when it came time to put all of my research into a readable piece of writing. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 One The Lost Generation: Fawn McKay Brodie 20 Two The New Mormon History: Leonard J. Arrington 53 Three Mormon Cultural History: Jan Shipps and Richard Bushman 85 Four The Emergence of the Immanent Archive 117 Bibliography 147 VI INTRODUCTION The program for the 2008 conference of the Mormon History Association included a session entitled "What Do We Do Now that 'New Mormon History' Is Old?"1 Two facilitators (Keith Erekson and Rachel Cope) were there only to stimulate "discussion and commentary from the audience." The reason for holding the session in the first place was the publication of an exchange published in late 2007 in the Journal of American History between Jan Shipps and Richard Bushman, in which both parties essentially agreed that the forty- or fifty-year life of what had been called the new Mormon history had come to an end. Shipps's contribution to the discussion is at once a book review (analyzing Bushman's 2005 Joseph Smith. Rough Stone Rolling), a eulogy (recounting the life of the new Mormon history), and a manifesto (announcing the absorption of Mormon history into "a new American history that forces readers to recognize that religion is as much a ' It should be noted that "Mormonism" embraces literally dozens of different denominations (most of them quite small), all tracing their roots back to Joseph Smith and his translation of the Book of Mormon. The largest and most discussed of these denominations is, of course, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints, centered in Salt Lake City, Utah. Two other denominations are also relatively well known: The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, relatively recently renamed the Community of Christ (a branch of Mormonism, centered in Independence, Missouri, that defined itself essentially as a Mormonism without polygamy in 1860), and The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a split-off of the Utah church that determined not to follow the definitive abandonment of polygamy by the latter m 1904). In this thesis, I will be dealing only with Mormonism as defined by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose archives are located at Church Headquarters on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. The two standard histories of Utah Mormonism are James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992); and Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Vintage Books, 1980). A more recent, if shorter, is Richard L. Bushman, Mormonism A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operates two websites: httpV/lds org and http.//mormon.org. It should also be noted that "Mormons" tend to refer to themselves as "members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," "Latter-day Saints" (LDS), or simply "Saints " I will employ all of these terms in this study. 2 Mormon History Association, "Sacramento Conference," Mormon History Association, http://www.mhahome org/conferences/registration/assets/'08_PremConferenceProgram.pdf (accessed March 12,2009). 1 part of our past as anything else"). As Shipps tells the story, beginning with his 1969 paper, "Faithful History," Richard Bushman has been slowly and methodically working from within to bring the new Mormon history to its logical conclusion, something he finally accomplished with Joseph Smith. Rough Stone Rolling. For Shipps—and Bushman himself says in his contribution to the exchange that "No one is better qualified to comment on the state of Mormon history than Jan Shipps"4—Bushman's 2005 biography of the Prophet Joseph Smith is "the crowning achievement of the new Mormon history" and, precisely so, its last word.5 But what is—or really, was—the new Mormon history, and what can be said to be taking its place? As Jan Shipps most pithily puts it, the new Mormon history was "an intellectual and historiographical movement that carried the story of the Latter-day Saints into the cultural mainstream just as Mormonism itself was moving in from the margins to find a place on the American religious landscape as a respectable belief system and an upstanding faith community."6 In other words, the new Mormon history was very much a part of a broader shift within Mormonism generally, a shift Shipps elsewhere calls "the scattering of the gathering."7 Shipps here observes that it has only been since World War II that Mormonism has ceased to be a phenomenon of the Intermountain West. Before the 1960s, Mormons can be said to have been mostly a regionalized "peculiar people" 3 Jan Shipps, "Richard Lyman Bushman, the Story of Joseph Smith and Mormonism, and the New Mormon History," Journal of American History 94 (September 2007): 498-516. 4 Richard L. Bushman. "What's New in Mormon History?" Journal of American History 94 (September 2007): 517.