Symptoms of Culture

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by Marjorie Garber

Routledge

Due/Published February 2000, 256 pages, paper

ISBN 041591860X

New in Paper! (F99)

The symptoms of culture are the anxieties that underlie modern life: the instability of gender roles, the mystery of female sexuality, the enigma of authority, the desire for greatness in ourselves and our heroes. Garber teases out the symptoms of our cultural discomfort--the troubles lurking in our pleasures, and even the pleasures we take in what makes us itch. From concern over fake orgasms to our worries about Great Books reading lists, from wanting God on our side at sports contests to wanting Shakespeareon our side whenever we want to sound important, we are a walking case of symptoms. Whatever the modern illness may be, the doctor locates the symptoms in a box of Jell-O or in Charlotte's marvelous web, on the football field or in the bedroom, in Shakespeare, in the classroom or the courtroom, or in a sneeze.

From Jonathan Dollimore: "With the scholarship, wit, wisdom, and affection of a great cultural critic, Marjorie Garber's reading of culture revolutionized the humanities. Whether her subject is Laurence Olivier's sexual ambiguity or female orgasm (real or faked), Garber shows us the strange fictions that pass as normality, and illustrates how modern culture is unavoidably crazy--and never more so than when lived most earnestly."

From Terry Castle: "Having suffered for some time from Marge Garber Syndrome--i.e., I can't stop myself from reading everything she writes--I approached her new collection of essays with the anticipatory gleam of the addict. Nor was I disappointed: these vastly enjoyable and instructive essay--on everything from Shakespear to Jell-O, Jack Benny to twin beds, sneezing to the Promise Keepers--confirm her reputation as one of the wittiest and most trenchant of our contemporary cultural commentators."

Table of Contents

Symptoms of Culture: An Introduction

American Dreams
Greatness
Two-Point Conversion
Gentility
Cinema Scopes: Evolution, Media, and the Law
Jell-O

Classic Signs
Character Assassination: Shakespeare, Anita Hill, and JFK
Shakespeare as Fetish
Roman Numerals
Second-Best Bed
I'll Have What She's Having
Notes, Index, etc.

Review

After writing seven books about tension-filled subjects -- from cross-dressing to Shakespeare, pet love to bisexuality -- Marjorie Garber has become an unofficial expert on cultural anxieties. Her new work, Symptoms of Culture, draws upon this expertise in order to examine the networks of symptoms (or anxieties) that underlie modern life. From concerns over fake orgasms to worries about Great Books, from wanting God's help at sports events to quoting Shakespeare on the Senate floor, contemporary culture is overloaded with symptomatic behavior. Garber notes, "I do not propose to diagnose culture as if it were an illness of which we could be cured, but to read culture as if it were structured like a dream, a network of representations that encodes wished and fears, projections and identifications..." Garber's characteristically diverse range of topics include "Shakespeare as fetish," "a fake orgasm," "genteel anti-semitism and the question of Madeline Albright's family origins," "the jell-O box used as evidence in the trial and conviction of the Rosenbergs," and "Christian evangelism (for men only) in a football stadium."

Jonathon Dollimore of Duke University says, "With the scholarship, wit, wisdom, and affection of a great cultural critic, Marjorie Garber's reading of culture revolutionizes the humanities...Garber shows us the strange fictions that pass as normality, and illustrates how modern culture is unavoidably crazy."