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“This is the Place” Performance and the Production of Space in Mormon Cultural Memory lindsay Adamson livingston What is an ideology without a space to which it refers, a space which it describes, whose vocabulary and links it makes use of, and whose code it embodies? Henri lefebvre, — The Production of Space fundamental to both the origin myth and the continuing identity of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints (lDS or Mormon) is the conception of early church members as migratory and largely without national affiliation. from its inception, the church was heavily involved in missionary efforts in Europe and elsewhere, a practice that led thousands to convert to Mormonism and subsequently immigrate to the United States, making the early church a multinational (though still overwhelmingly white and European) entity. Although the initial vision of this pan-national movement continues to loom large over the imaginary consciousness of church members, it is the ensuing westward migration that is most foundational to lDS identity. in the mid-nineteenth century, after successive expulsions from several towns, an extermination order issued by Missouri’s governor, and the death of their prophet and founder, over seventy thousand Mormon believers trekked west.1 The majority of these pioneers ended up in an area of the MexicanTerritory that would later become Utah. The stops made along this trek (both scheduled and impromptu), along with sites central to the nineteenth-century founding of the religion, have become pilgrimage destinations for contemporary church members , locations where space, performance, and memory work together to codify a sanctioned historical narrative of the church’s founding and early existence. That founding is tied to a particularly spectacular narrative, one that colors all understanding of the lDS faith. According to the official lDS version of founder Joseph Smith’s “first vision,” one morning in early spring the fourteen-year-old “retired to the woods” to pray.2 Troubled by the religious upheavals in his community , the young man sought spiritual guidance. As the story goes, Smith saw a “This is the Place” / 23 vision while praying, wherein God spoke to the boy, encouraging him to abstain from joining any established church and, instead, to found his own. Ten years later, Smith, along with a small congregation of believers, established the lDS church. Pierre nora’s conceptualization of memorial and historical space is particularly helpful in understanding how a cultural group, in this case the lDS Church, utilizes sites of origin to define and defend specific narrative constructions of its own identity and history. in his 1989 essay, “between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” nora explains that if a society has to set aside “places of memory,” it is because memory is no longer clear and present in the community—members must visit these newly consecrated sites in order to simulate memories. As a condition of modern existence, we simply are too far from memory to inhabit it any longer and now must make do with a geographically situated copy. Distinguishing between history and memory, nora claims that though foundational events can impart meaning to a place, it is the site, rather than the event, that carries memory. He expounds upon this point: “indeed, it is the exclusion of the event itself that defines the lieu de mémoire. Memory attaches itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events.”3 Just as geographical sites carry memory, so too does performance. Authorities overseeing church history sites have seized upon this notion, and many tourist locales associated with the Mormon Church feature formal performances meant to enhance visitors’ experiences and increase their memorial identification with the site and the events that purportedly transpired there. Most often, these performances are what Joseph Roach would term a “performance of origin,” and they reenact the foundational narratives of the lDS community.4 less formally, the performances serve as a way for tourist-spectators to further connect to the site, seemingly erasing the spatio-temporal boundaries keeping them away from a true memory of the founding of the religion. While this traditional type of performance is certainly more visible, there are other subtler performance elements that heavily influence the meaning and efficacy of church history sites as lieux de mémoire. Most intriguing is the function of space at such sites. Suspended as they are between history, memory, and contemporary phenomenological experience, they trip lightly between functioning as absolute, sacred space and present, social space. Compellingly, the space at these sites is...

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