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Oedipus Myth Inadequate and I Put Forward an Alternative Hypothesis of Social Survival, Based on the Demands of Societal Functioning

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Oedipus Myth Inadequate and I Put Forward an Alternative Hypothesis of Social Survival, Based on the Demands of Societal Functioning Benin and Thebes: Elementary Forms of Civilization PETER P. EKEH This chapter deals with comparative themes in Oedipal myths. Oedipal myths in classical Greek city-state civilization will be compared with Oedipal myths in Benin city-state civilization in Africa. I use this comparative strategy in order to shed light on the functioning of elementary city-state civilizations and to generalize from the elementary forms of civilization to the dynamics of more complex modern forms of civilization. In doing so, I find Freud's on or publication of and Fromm's interpretations of the Oedipus myth inadequate and I put forward an alternative hypothesis of social survival, based on the demands of societal functioning. The comparison of Greek city-state civilization with their counter parts outside the Euro-America cultural matrix runs against stand personal use only. Citati ard practice. It is fashionable in Western scholarship to trace the rums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. origins of Western culture and society to Greek city-state civiliza tion. In sociology, for example, Talcott Parsons (1966) recently tten permission of the copyright holder. characterized ancient Greece as a "seed bed" society on which modern Western institutions grew. Equal, ifnot greater, importance • is assigned by historians and philosophers to the significance of Greek city-state civilization for the evolution of modern Western ; culture. While such common tendency of linking Greek city-state i civilization to the characteristics of modern Western culture seems generally beneficial to our understanding of modern institutions and material prohibited without express wri express without prohibited material Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszent Rechteinhabers. des Erlaubnis der schriftlichen – bedürfen von Teilen – auch Veröffentlichungen of modern human behavior, the equally important significance of Greek city-state civilization qua city-state civilization is bound to be lost if we do not seek to delineate what it shares with other city-state civilizations, especially those that are not Western in origin. The period of early Greece that most resembles Benin city-state Ekeh, P. P., 1976: Benin and Thebes: Elementary Forms of Civilization, In: Psychoanalytic Study of Society, Vol. 7 (1976), pp.65 65-93. L Peter P. Ekeh 66 Benin and Thebes: Elementary Forms of Civilization 67 civilization is probably that characterized as the Archaic Age (770 to his wife Jocasta, a shepherd sent the child to a forest from where, 508 B.C.) (cf. Finley 1970, especially p. 71). Benin, as a city-state, is unknown to the royal couple, the infant prince Oedipus was taken to estimated by the Benin chronicler Egharevba to have been founded Corinth to be raised in the Palace. Prompted by accusations that he by 900 a.d.1 and it flourished until 1914, when it was conquered by did not know his ancestry, Oedipus, now fully grown up, consulted the British and absorbed into modern Nigeria. In spite of sporadic anoracle concerning his parenthood; whereupon he was warned that contacts with Portuguese adventurers, beginning in 1485, and in he would kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus, ignorant of spite of close political ties with Yoruba city-states (cf. Smith 1969, his true parentage, fled Corinth to avoid such a fate, only to pp. 105-106), Benin city-state was not in any fundamental touch encounter and kill a man, who happened to be his real father— with Western civilization or even Arabic Islamic influence. although both father and son were ignorant of their relationship. To be sure, there are important differences between the two Proceeding to Thebes, Oedipus saved the city from the torments of city-state civilizations. Especially important is the fact that a limited the half-human, half-beast Sphinx, by solving her riddle. As a amount of literacy developed in early Greece, while there is no reward, Oedipus became king and married the widowed queen evidence of literacy in Benin.2 On the other hand, Benin and early Jocasta, his unwitting mother. After the lapse of years and the birth Greek city-state civilizations exploited the intellectual resources of of two boys and two girls to the marriage, a plague ensued. The folklore and myths. Reliance on oracles and divine revelation was discovery of the true events led to the suicide of Oedipus' mother- common to both. Evidence of the importance of city-statehood in wife and the self-afflicted blinding and self-exile of Oedipus. both Benin and Thebes, my chief example of early Greek city-state Oedipus the King, thus recounted, is the part of the Oedipus myth civilization, is supplied by the fact that both cities were protected by that is best known. The other two parts, Oedipus at Colonus and fortifications around the city, to fend off hostile attacks from on or publication of Antigone, are, however, part of the same myth. Oedipus at Colonus neighbors (cf. Finley 1970, pp. 54-57). It is on tfiis common recounted the hostility between Oedipus and his mother's brother, emphasis on the city3 that I shall build my interpretation of the Creon4; the warm affection between Oedipus and his daughters; the Oedipal myths to follow. bad relations between Oedipus and his sons; and the hostility The Oedipus myth, as codified by Sophocles, has become so well between the two sons of Oedipus issuing in a destructive civil war. personal use only. Citati known, thanks largely to Freud's popularization ofpart of the myth, This last theme ofthe Oedipus myth was carried over to Antigone, in rums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. that I need recount only its essential elements here. In Oedipus the which is told the story of Creon's misrule of Thebes, following the King we are told the fateful events that led King Laius ofThebes, mutual fratricide of the sons of Oedipus; the hostility between Creon tten permission of the copyright holder. upon intimation from an oracle that he would be killed by his son, to and his son, Haemon, resulting in the latter's suicide; the role of seek the death of his infant son immediately after his birth. Through 4Conflict between mother's brother and sister's son, so remarkably discussed by ' This date is seen as rather early by Bradbury (1959) and Smith (1969, pp. Malinowski (1927, 1929) as a feature of the "nuclear complex" in matrilineal 105-106), who tend to place the earliest period ofBenin city-statehood around 1300 locieties, was in fact not absent in the Oedipus myth. Indeed, while the rivalry A.D. between Oedipus and his father was unwittingly, motivated, that between him and 2While special palace employees preserved records by oral tradition, with his mother's brother, Creon, was fully conscious—thus paralleling Jones's (1924) remarkable accuracy, the most important features ofBenin culture and history were interpretation of Malinowski's data as indicating that the two relations are not material prohibited without express wri express without prohibited material Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszent Rechteinhabers. des Erlaubnis der schriftlichen – bedürfen von Teilen – auch Veröffentlichungen distilled into myths and folklore. For a good source of such Benin myths and independent, but that childhood unconscious rivalry between son and father Is folklore, see Sidahome (1964). displaced by the individual into conscious rivalry with the mother's brother in 3The Greek word polis cannot be fully translated by the English word "city" adulthood. (Also cf. A. Parsons 1964.) I do not ofcourse accept Jones's hard line without losing the emotional meaning of the term. Similarly, the Benin word deterministic interpretation of the Oedipus complex; however, it is of some Ore-Edo cannot be fully rendered into English as "city" without losing its emotional lignificance that the wealth ofmaterial in Oedipus the King can infact accommodate connotation of city-centeredness. the "Jones-Malinowski debate." Ekeh, P. P., 1976: Benin and Thebes: Elementary Forms of Civilization, In: Psychoanalytic Study of Society, Vol. 7 (1976), pp. 65-93. Peter P. Ekeh Benin and Thebes: Elementary Forms of Civilization 69 68 Creon's wife in siding with their son against her husband; and the The oracle declared Esagho, the senior wife of the Ogiso, to bitter quarrel between one of Oedipus's daughters *nt,g°"e' , be the cause, and that she must be killed in order that the Creon over burial rights for the elder of the sons of Oedipus. The red Ogiso's wives might have issue. Esagho concealed the prediction thread that runs through the trilogy is hostility between focal actors of the oracle when she reached home and told her husband that particularly between fathers and sons. Less clear-cut are the good the oracle declared Ekaladerhan, the only son of the Ogiso, to relations between some of the actors, particularly between mothers be the cause, and that it was Ekaladerhan's nature and destiny and sons and between fathers and daughters. I shall assume in this that prevented other children being born to the Ogiso, and he paper, more or less in agreement with Fromm (1949) on this pom must therefore be killed or offered as a sacrifice to enable the ihat acomplete interpretation of the Oedipus myth requires that al Ogiso's wives to have children. three parts of Sophocles' trilogy be seen in the same theoret.cal light Esagho then induced all the other women in the harem to join in the explanation ofthese relationships between the actors. with her to worry Ogiso daily to allow Ekaladerhan to be killed In comparing features of Oedipus the King with the more modern in order to open the way for them to have children.
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