This is the Son of Kings

The dramatic irony of Oedipus is that he doesn't know who he is. The reason receives somewhat less attention than expected: Oedipus' parents tried to have him murdered as a baby:

This is the Son of Kings

"Nor is that other point to be passed over, that the Sphinx was subdued by a lame man with club feet . . ." - Sir Francis Bacon

It was night in Thebes and the cry of a newborn echoed in the halls of the king. He waited, as custom prescribed, for the midwife's announcement. But when she arrived, she stared boldly at him for awhile. Finally she said, "Somethin's wrong with 'is foot."

The king hastened to the royal bed, where he found the queen lying with her back to the naked infant. "Do what you have to do," she murmured.

"I'll have Shepherd take it to the Grove," he said.

It was not yet dawn when Shepherd arrived at the Grove of the Lost. Unseen predators coughed beyond the lamp as he laid the tiny bundle on the bloodstained rock.

 

The story would have ended there, but as Shepherd made to depart he heard the infant sobbing quietly, hopelessly to itself. He took the child forthwith to his parents' home in a mountain village.

"Take care," he told them. "This is the son of kings."

"What shall we call him?" his father asked. But just then Shepherd's mother, having unwrapped the child, exclaimed, "Oh, the poor baby, his poor foot's all swollen."

"Very well," his father decided, "we'll call him Haltfoot."

When he was become a man, Haltfoot set off for Thebes with his most trusted companions, for he would look upon the faces of his parents. As they entered a crossroads, with the towers of the city gleaming in the distance, a mounted nobleman ordered them to step aside. But Haltfoot, having recognized the king from his likeness on a coin, said "It is written, A commoner shall pass, and none shall deny him."

At this the king made to run him through with his spear. But Haltfoot, stepping aside, seized the spear as it passed and threw the king into the road.

"Take him home," he instructed his companions. "Let him know the village where a prince spent his youth."

Whereupon the king asked, "Who are you?"

"I am your son, whom you sent to the Grove."

In the cool of the evening Haltfoot passed through the gates of Thebes and found the restless queen pacing the byways of the market.

Dawn was brightening the eastern horizon when Haltfoot rose from the royal bed. But the queen detained him, asking "Why did old Shepherd start when he saw you last night?" Haltfoot instead replied, "Do you know where the king is?"

"He rides to the royal estates.

"You are very like him in form," she added. "Who are you?"

But Haltfoot commanded, "Look upon me."

Now it was full day, and an unpitying sun blazed on the cold stones.

"I too am of royal blood," said Haltfoot. "Look upon me and know who I am."

The queen stared wildly at him. "Say no more," she cried. "By the Merciless, say no more."

Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 2

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass

To be decent, every person has to make their own ethical decisions. . . . If you are conformist, you almost certainly violate universal ethical standards of decency.

Then they would ... thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away. ... He let it out and they all turned against him immediately. - A "sin-eater," described in Master and Commander: (vide infra)

She is looking straight at me with a grim, angry expression, so that I almost recoil. You should be ashamed, it seems to say. Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 1 

The following were conveyed to the authors of this blog by one of the stigmatized disabled:

From the first article in this series, hopefully it is beginning to be apparent what the purposes of the series are.

One purpose is to give a report from inside on one of the fronts in the battle against prejudicial discrimination.

Another purpose is a sociological perspective. Social identity is what makes ordinary human life work. For a person to have what Erving Goffman called a "spoiled identity" may be to "reduce his life chances."
 
  A third purpose is to argue that all prejudice is the same prejudice and all discrimination is the same discrimination. The enormous harm of prejudicial discrimination throughout the ages is the history of man's inhumanity to man. Prejudice is too monstrous to be a tool for any honorable purpose.

  A fourth purpose is to argue that such middle-class values as the idea of a common humanity; the idea of a connection with the past and the future and of a responsibility to our ancestors and our descendants; the idea of civility and of respect, so far as possible, for all people regardless of what group they are thought to belong to; the belief in uplift; and the idea that political freedom comes when "we the people," all of us with one spirit work together for the public good--to argue that these were favorable to the stigmatized. The contrary values of the sixties, in particular the tendency to frame solutions in terms of group identity, have been harmful to those with a spoiled identity.
 
  A fifth purpose is to draw attention to a pervasive double standard in discrimination. For example, the term "harelip" is as ugly and defamatory as the n-word, yet even when it clearly is being used to marginalize and disenfranchise those with cleft lips and palates, as in the phrase "if it harelips the governor," progressives stand calmly silent.
 
  A sixth purpose is to argue that "harelip" is the symbolic birth defect, the one which William Shakespeare and Mark Twain cite, and that those so stigmatized have a corresponding classic symbolic role, the scapegoat, the "sin eater,"* as Patrick O'Brien says in Master and Commander: in Wikipedia, "one who is blamed for misfortunes, often as a way of distracting attention from the real causes." [Ed. Note: The current Wikipedia no longer says this. It does say:

The biblical Jesus has been interpreted as a universal archetype for sin-eaters, offering his life to purify all of humanity of their sins.

 For the Disabled Archetype in myth, see the following post, This is the Son of Kings.]

 A seventh purpose is to draw attention to widespread prejudices, some with impressive scholarly pedigrees, which could contribute to the double standard mentioned above, which serve as the unspoken and unexamined rationale for targeting the stigmatized: "In a certain state it is indecent to go on living," the influential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. "To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society."
 
  An eighth purpose is to ask you to imagine the life of the stigmatized. Would a complete stranger attack you as soon as he sees you? Three such cases (out of many) are described in the first article, and as seen above no less a personage than Nietzsche argues that this is legitimate. What would be the cumulative effect, if you went through each day never knowing who would turn on you? If you came to realize that in many cases where for others the answer is "yes," for you it is "no," would you have the same hopes, the same aspirations, the same goals, the same confidence as you do now? Imagine an existence characterized by reduced life chances.
 
  A ninth purpose is to draw attention to the dual nature of identity. There is the identity we have by ascription, which Goffman describes as "spoiled." But other sociologists, such as John Murray Cuddihy, have argued that a feature of liberal modernity is that individuals have their character by achievement and not by ascription. Randall Kennedy, in "My Race Problem -- And Ours," [see Defining Liberalism: Randall Kennedy's 'My Race Problem—And Ours', My "Liberalism" Problem—And Ours] argued that "a brute fact does not dictate the proper human response to it." For the stigmatized, there are terrible consequences attendant on accepting the way many persons see them. A difficult choice is forced on them: To accept the "profound contempt" as their due; or to reject it at the possible cost of being accused of failing to know their place. As a friend once told me, when someone once asked him, "As an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" he answered, "It gives me a valuable perspective."

(*)From Master and Commander: "I have a curious case ..."

What is his name?
Cheslin: he has a hare lip. ...
Yet he has been of singular service to men and women, in his time.
In what way?
He was a sin-eater. ...
Will you tell me about him? ...
When a man died Cheslin would be sent for; there would be a piece of bread on the dead man's breast; he would eat it, taking the sins upon himself. Then they would push a silver piece into his hand and thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away. ... He let it out and they all turned against him immediately.

Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 1

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass

To be decent, every person has to make their own ethical decisions. . . . If you are conformist, you almost certainly violate universal ethical standards of decency.

The following were conveyed to the authors of this blog by one of the stigmatized disabled:

Transit Route 359 from downtown past one of the city's lake parks, in the Year of Our Lord 2006, uses 60-ft New Flyer hi-floor coaches which have long seats facing each other at the front. I like these seats, and as I sit in one of them one spring afternoon, relaxed, anticipating the view of the canal and the coastal mountains when the route crosses the bridge, I commit the error of an unguarded glance at a woman directly across from me. She is looking straight at me with a grim, angry expression, so that I almost recoil. You should be ashamed, it seems to say.

 Although she has caught me by surprise, I am not actually surprised; and though in a sense I understand what is happening, in another sense I never quite do understand these incidents. She probably wouldn't look at a minority that way, or for that matter a person in a wheelchair. The era when help wanted ads contained phrases such as "No colored," or "No handicaps need apply" has passed. But as for us--for my kind--it's as if the civil rights revolution has never happened.

 It is a few months earlier. A passenger waiting on a bench at a downtown bus stop is looking fixedly at a spot a couple of inches below my eyes. A few minutes later I glance back. Her gaze is still locked. Now I face her: sometimes this will cause such people to realize what they are doing, and they will look away. But not this time.

   I sometimes think that we are the symbolic people. Sociologists have studied us, and the philosophers have mentioned us in their remarks about the human condition; Shakespeare refers to us by our familiar epithet, but with his usual charity, in "King Lear" ("This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock. He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.") and in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ("And the blots of Nature's hand Shall not in their issue stand; Never mole, hare lip, nor scar, Nor mark prodigious, such as are Despised in nativity, Shall upon their children be"). We are similarly mentioned, but unkindly, in the movie "Casino," in an article by the "liberal" columnist Molly Ivins at time.com, and Mark Twain makes cruel sport of us in Huckleberry Finn. ("Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about fourteen--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip.")
   It is some years back. I'm waiting by an elevator at City Hall, where I work for the City. Someone from another department points at me and says something to a waiting minority, whose eyes widen in shock as she looks at me. He repeats it, louder this time, so I can hear it. "Harelip," he says. "Harelip."