Item Detail
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18294
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7
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27
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English
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Can Deconstruction Save the Day? "Faithful Scholarship" and the Uses of Postmodernism
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Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought
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Spring 2008
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41
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no.1
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1-33
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During the 1960s and 1970s, scholars began writing what has been named "New Mormon History." These historians did not seek to prove history through testimony or the "role of God," but instead relied on "'psychological, sociological, and economic explanation' that claimed to be objective and neutral." Beginning in the 1980s, other Mormon scholars, called antipositivists by Duffy, used postmodern theories to refute New Mormon History. Postmodernism is concerned not as much with truth but "in investigating the historical origins of our ideas about what is true and analyzing the political implications of those ideas." Postmodernists study and uphold people who were marginalized by the ideas of the Enlightment (ideas of reason and objectivity that New Mormon History tried to follow), and feel that knowledge has been socially constructed rather than "originating in a transcendent source such as the will of God." This theory of truth is known as antifoundationalism and was used by antipositivists who criticized New Mormon History by arguing "that because knowledge is never neutral, LDS historians should abandon efforts" to be neutral observers and instead become defenders of the faith. In addition, faithful scholars also employed perspectivism or the idea that Church history written from a faithful LDS perspective, previously marginalized, could be legitimate. Perspectivism increased in the 1990s as history written from a faithful perspective "became normative and rewarding for Church affiliated scholars." Duffy concludes that postmodernism has benefited Church history scholarship as it created interest in the study of "religious minorities." But he is not sure that "postmodern appeals" will secure "academic legitimacy for faithful Mormon scholars." Instead, he thinks that these "appeals work best at assuring intellectually inclined insiders of the credibility of the faith and at discomfiting Enlightenment liberals within the Mormon community."
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Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon
Critical Foundations of Mormon Apologetics
Defending Ourselves, Offending Ourselves: Context and Commentary on the 1990s Theory Debates between the Historical and the Literary
Learning to Read With The Book of Mormon
Mormonism and the Emotions : An Analysis of LDS Scriptural Texts
The Bible and the Latter-day Saint Tradition (book)
The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism -
Adventures of a Church Historian
Advocacy and Inquiry in the Writing of Latter-day Saint History
A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-First Century
An 'Inside-Outsider' In Zion
Apologetic and Critical Assumptions about Book of Mormon Historicity
Attempting to Situate Joseph Smith
By the Hand of Mormon : The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion
Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
Historiography and the New Mormon History : A Historian's Perspective
Looking for God in History
Mormonism : The Story of a New Religious Tradition
Prolegomena to Any Future Mormon Studies
Scholarly Studies of Mormonism in the Twentieth Century
So Dangerous It Couldn't Be Talked About
Some Reflections on the New Mormon History
The Angel and the Beehive : The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation
The Book of Mormon Wars : A Non-Mormon Perspective
The Case for the New Mormon History : Thomas G. Alexander and His Critics
The Challenge of Historical Consciousness : Mormon History and the Encounter with Secular Modernity
The Function of Mormon Literary Criticism at the Present Time
The Larger Issue
The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership : A Contemporary Chronology
'The Mantle Is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect'
The New Mormon History : Revisionist Essays on the Past
The Place of Joseph Smith in the Development of American Religion : A Historiographical Inquiry
The Shipps Odyssey in Retrospect
The Story of the Latter-day Saints