Ehud, Stigma, and the Management of Spoiled Identity
| Autor: | David Chalcraft |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
060303 religions & theology
Psychoanalysis Social stigma Identity (social science) Stigma (botany) 06 humanities and the arts Social model of disability 0603 philosophy ethics and religion Biblical story Disability studies 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Id ego and super-ego Narrative Sociology 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts. 11 |
| ISSN: | 1743-8888 1743-887X |
| DOI: | 10.1558/post.17563 |
| Popis: | The story of Ehud, and his assassination of the Moabite King Eglon (Judges 3: 12–30), continues to entertain readers and hearers alike. The story also perplexes, largely on moral grounds. This paper utilises the sociology of Erving Goffman and insights from disability studies to re-tell the story of Ehud as someone who is doubly stigmatised. That is, Ehud not only carriers the stigma of left-handedness but is also disabled; moreover, the Moabite King is also disabled/immobile because of his obesity. I take the biblical text as conveying that Ehud is left-handed by necessity given the impairment in his right hand/arm. Adopting a social model of disability, I apply Goffman’s account of the management of spoiled identity developed in his book Stigma (1963) to explore how the narrative depicts various dimensions of social stigma and Ehud’s moral career as he attempts to manage his spoiled identity and the degrees of societal acceptance and rejection he experiences in different contexts. The key arguments of Goffman are summarised before I apply central concepts from Goffman to the biblical story. Concepts include “moral career,” the distinction between social, personal and ego (self-) identity, and the key distinction between a person with a stigma being discredited (because the impairment is obvious and seen by all), on the one hand, or bearing a stigma that is discreditable (that is, it would discredit them if found out), on the other. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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