In response to Mr Armstrong's enquiry: Henri-Jacques Stiker is an elderly
French philosopher who wrote his book "Corps infirmes et sociétés" (Paris,
Aubier Montaigne) in 1982, at a time when "Disability Studies" in the
anglophone world was in its infancy or merely embryonic. Stiker's passage
on the myth of Oedipus (pp. 60-72, notes on pp. 227-228) cites work by
Delcourt, Lévi-Strauss, R. Giraud, and J.P. Vernant, and mentions Barthes.
None of these, by any stretch of the imagination, was engaged
in "Disability Studies" as currently understood, though Marie Delcourt
wrote at least two monographs in which the travails and infirmities of
Oedipus were closely scrutinised, and Lévi-Strauss had a go at all manner
of subjects and had a lot of fun doing it.
When a new edition of Stiker's book came out in English in 1997, as "A
History of Disability", the myth of Oedipus occupied pp. 47-59, notes on
pp. 212. The same French authors are cited, plus Nicole Belmont, and the
Gospel of Mark (in the Christian scriptures). No anglophone "disability
studies" work is cited. However, in a chapter in 1999, (in Holzer, Vreede
& Weigt, "Disability in Different Cultures", Bielefeld, Transcript, pp. 352-
80), Stiker does take notice of "a school of thought established at
universities in Great Britain, thanks to disabled researchers and teachers
who publish a great deal, and also put out the journal 'Disability and
Society'." He examines this briefly and not unsympathetically, but
concludes on p. 371 by warning "my British friends", that their theorising
comes at the end of a century-long process that is just about ready to
disappear up its own backside - (but he expresses this more elegantly,
being a French philosopher and a person of great charm and wit).
Henri-Jacques, incidentally, would be mildly amused if he were aware that
enquiries are going on among les Britanniques, as to his firmity or
infirmity, democratic credentials, and general political correctness.
To get very far with modern literary studies on the mythology of Oedipus,
disability and the exposure of normal or abnormal infants, it is probably
necessary to begin as Stiker did, with Marie Delcourt, "Stérilités
mystérieuses & naissances maléfiques dans l'antiquité classique" (Paris,
Droz, 1938), and "Oedipe ou la légende du conquérant" (Paris, Droz, 1944).
Delcourt admitted to breaking new ground with her studies, and she was
doing so at a time when the corpus of Greek and Latin writings was not
handily available on CD-Rom, but had to be searched the hard way, and in
pretty difficult geopolitical circumstances.
To the modest extent that I understand what Delcourt wrote, I don't find it
very convincing -- but I'm not aware of any strong critique mounted by
people with actual expertise in the field. In fact, one of the current
young turks, Daniel Ogden, in "The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece",
(London, Duckworth, 1997), is very appreciative of Delcourt. But his
polemical Introduction indicates that he too is somewhat out on a limb.
Historiographical practice has become more critical since the 1940s -
there's not much grounds of evidence on which to take a dogmatic stand on
anything Oedipal, so if one wants to spin a new yarn one has to make most
of it up, and then face out the disapproval of the professors in suits.
A penetrating literary perspective on Oedipus and the professors, at least
in North America, is afforded by the novelist Robertson Davis in "The
Salterton Trilogy", when Professor Vambrace, a tightly-buttoned specialist
in classical studies, is approached and offered some kindly but incautious
advice by Norm Yarrow, a counsellor (who had "received his training chiefly
through general courses and from some interesting work which proved fairly
conclusively that rats were unable to distinguish between squares, circles
and triangles"). Norm undertakes to show Professor Vambrace that the
Oedipus Complex is the key to the Professor's relationship with his
daughter: he has incestuous feelings towards her. During a brief but lively
exchange, Norm learns that Professor Vambrace and Oedipus are old pals, and
also becomes aware that this Oedipus business is more complex than he had
bargained with -- but the dénouement, in which Vambrace offers to sue him
for slander, then chases him out of the room with a large stick, offers
Norm clear proof that he was right in his diagnosis, because people always
get mad when one points out their Oedipus Complex. ("Leaven of Malice",
reprinted in "The Salteron Trilogy", Penguin Books, 1986, pp. 405-409).
We should bear in mind that there are many legends about Oedipus, and no
convincing objection can be raised to any modern legend that enrols him (or
H-J Stiker) as a card-carrying participant in Disability Studies. There
may, however, be some Vambracian abreaction - which merely proves the need
for confronting and exposing it!
m99m
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