Tar & Feathers: Agnotology, Dissent, and Queer Mormon History

Nerida Bullock
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Nerida Bullock: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

International Journal of Religion, 2020, vol. 1, issue 1, 135-149

Abstract: In 2014 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) updated their official website to include information about the polygamy/polyandry practiced by Joseph Smith, their founder and prophet, and his many wives. The admission by the LDS Church reconciles the tension between information that had become readily available online since the 1990s and church-sanctioned narratives that obscured Smith’s polygamy while concurrently focusing on the polygyny of Brigham Young, Smith’s successor. This paper entwines queer theory with Robert Proctor’s concept of agnotology—a term used to describe the epistemology of ignorance, to consider dissent from two interrelated perspectives: 1) how dissent from feminists and historians within theLDS Church challenged(mis)constructions of Mormon history, and; 2) how the Mormon practice of polygamy in the late nineteenth century dissented from Western sexual mores that conflated monogamy with Whiteness, democracy and social progression in the newly formed American Republic.

Keywords: Mormon polygamy; Agnotology; Polyandry; Queer theology; ignorance; JosephSmith; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mig:ijornl:v:1:y:2020:i:1:p:135-149

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DOI: 10.33182/ijor.v1i1.1104

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