James W. Stone, Crossing Gender in Shakespeare: Feminist Psychoanalysis and the Difference Within.

Labbie, Erin Felicia

James W. Stone, Crossing Gender in Shakespeare: Feminist Psychoanalysis and the Difference Within. New York and London: Routledge, 2010

Among the myriad of publications about gender in Shakespeare, James W. Stone's Crossing Gender in Shakespeare: Feminist Psychoanalysis and the Difference Within earns a rightful place. Stone's attention to wordplay and textuality as sexuality (and vice versa) is sustained in an effective manner throughout the book.

Crossing Gender in Shakespeare is heralded by three well-chosen epigraphs, but Shoshana Felman's statement stands out as the most applicable among them. In "Re-reading Femininity," Felman states, "The feminine ... is not outside the masculine, its reassuring canny opposite, it is inside the masculine, its uncanny difference from itself (41). Sexual difference is characterized by the uncanny. The psychoanalytical framework within which sexual difference is articulated foregrounds the blend of familiarity and strangeness in the visual encounter with the anatomical female. This blend is expressed in Sigmund Freud's account of E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Sandman, where a confused protagonist Nathaniel calls the live woman named Clara an automaton, and mistakes the automaton Olimpia for a live woman. In Jacques Lacan's view, the uncanny defines sexual difference as extimacy (extimite), or the simultaneous presence of the intimate and the external or foreign.

I begin this review with this brief account of how the uncanny figures into psychoanalysis and sexual difference because this quilting point characterizes Crossing Gender both in terms of its content and its publication. Indeed, there is something uncanny about the presentation of an argument about feminist views in psychoanalysis within a book published in 2010, but which reprints essays written in 1995, 1996, and 2002. A new introduction would have helped to situate the argument of the book within the more popularly recognized field of queer studies. The book's sense of familiarity in the form of repetition (but repetition without difference) is its most notable flaw.

While Stone presents familiar arguments about gender in Shakespeare, the element of the book that renders it uncanny is the newness and the unfamiliar manner in which the author's painstaking readings of language in Shakespeare present new ways of arriving at familiar arguments. Stone's thesis seeks to reinvigorate a discussion about psychoanalysis and new historicism as methods of reading gender in Shakespeare. Although there is no clear rationale for the choice of plays that are analyzed in the volume, Stone seems to balance a reading of comedy, tragedy, and history to foreground the political implications of sexual difference in plays that are frequendy studied and taught in the classroom. His first chapter, "The Transvestic Glove-Text of Twelfth Night," corrects Stephen Greenblatt's reading of the glove in the play by attending to the ability of the glove to be like an envelope that (like extimacy) touches from within and from without. Situating his argument in the historical context of Michel Foucault's famous reading of the hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, Stone coins the term hermaphroditic anamorphism, which he defines as "the quality of being and simultaneously not being one sex; of being both male and female, and therefore neither one nor the other" (24). The focus on wordplay and naming in the chapter offers a convincing reading of sexual difference within Twelfth Night, and it is evidence of a careful understanding of how psychoanalysis reads the symptom of language as a material product.

In contrast to the anamorphic multiplicity of gender in chapter 1, chapter 2, "The Sound of' Un' in Richard lI," focuses on negation and lack in Richard's fragile masculinity. The un-doing, un-naming, un-Kinging, un-productive (read as impotent), figure of a single prefix calls attention to the way that power is its own repressive apparatus, and masculinity as power is predominantly an illusion. Stone places Richard in the "heim," or the room of the womb in the walls of Pomfret that metaphorize the uncanny (unheirnlich) element of his own lack, and concludes that Richard is "uncannily fractured by the difference within" (60).

Moving from "un" to "union," chapter three, "Androgynous 'Union' and the Woman in Hamlet" analyzes Hamlet's femininity. Citing Ernst Jones and Jacqueline Rose's readings of Hamlet as the Sphinx and the Mona Lisa respectively, Stone engages a strong history of scholarship on Hamlet's gendered identity in a masterful manner. This chapter is one of the more thorough and convincing as well as carefully nuanced chapters in the volume. Here, Stone addresses the sexuality of each character while also maintaining a clear focus on Hamlet; he provides answers to questions about Hamlet's precarious state and the state of the union, as he also engages Freud's reading of the uncanny. As Stone explains, "union" is "one of Freud's uncanny 'un" words, whose primal sense is antithetical, both itself and not itself" (76). Although androgyny figures into the title and thesis of the chapter it is less significant to Hamlet's sexuality than is his intricate and extirnate view of the uncanny. This chapter deserves a place alongside the reading of Ernst Jones and Jacqueline Rose in a seminar study of Hamlet. Similarly, chapter 4, "Impotence and the Feminine in Othello," offers a unique approach to gender and sexual difference in the character of Othello. The juxtaposition of Hamlet with Othello reframes the way that Othello might be read; his "weak function" and his impotence resemble Hamlet's procrastination and delay.

Perhaps one form of continuity among chapters is the idea of a leader who is also androgynous and impotent. Chapter 5, "Martial Cleopatra and the Remasculation of Antony," presents Antony as an androgynous figure. Again, this is not a new argument although this chapter has the potential to continue the theme of the "un,' and the "union" with reference to Antony's name. Yet the argument is not as substantial in this chapter as a reader hopes it will be. Furthermore, the "martial" in the chapter does not foreground the political valence that gender discussions might produce. This chapter disappoints as a transition between the fourth chapter on Othello and the sixth chapter, "The Woman Within in Cyrnbeline," and mostly because the latter chapter's focus on parthenogenesis and cross-dressing has weighty political implications. The question of the materiality of the performance of gender and the question of"pure blood" offers a possible point of continuity with the theme of the uncanny in the book, but this final chapter does not present a metanarrative that marks this connection.

Stone saves his metanarrative for his epilogue, the title of which carries one of my favorite images, also employed by Rudolphe Gasche: "The Tain of the Mirror." Here, Stone places sexual difference at the intersection of psychoanalysis and new historicism when he states, "The insistence on the truth of sexuality manifests itself ... as an ideological illusion" (128). Stone then turns to Luce Irigarary, whose concept of the speculum reconfigures the feminine as extimate to itself; for Stone, the speculum shows how femininity is within masculinity. The feminine difference "from itself" potentially revitalizes a discussion of psychoanalytical feminism. Yet Stone's opening sentence in his epilogue could also refer to a queer analysis of the same themes that each chapter of Crossing Gender in Shakespeare examines.

The political, cultural, and literary currency of queer studies within Shakespeare studies deserves a gesture within the book. I am left wondering how Stone would clarify the difference between a strict focus on sexual difference in psychoanalysis and new historicism and a potential understanding of how it contributes to queer studies. Such a gesture would have helped to locate the book within a broader disciplinary discussion. Nonetheless, Stone's insistence on reinvigorating the unfinished conversation about sexual difference in Shakespeare might reframe the way in which feminist studies and psychoanalysis continue to delineate the implications of reading otherwise. Stone extends a crucial argument within literary studies broadly speaking, and recalls the impact of Toril Moi's Sexual/Textual Politics. Crossing Gender in Shakespeare reminds readers not only that these debates are not settled, but also that to believe we have achieved post-feminism is itself an ideological illusion.

"There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers that, with his 'tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide,' supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; being an absolute Johannes Factotum, in his conceit the only shake-scene in a country."

-- Robert Greene, Groatsworth of Wit (1592)

For those institutions and persons who have become subscribers over the years, I want to extend my personal thanks for your support. I know I speak for the journal's editors, staff, and advisory board. Your help made a great difference as the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing (CEDP) strove to maintain high standards and to do new things with this publication for Clemson University Digital Press (CUDP) since becoming the journal's publisher with Volume XIX. Outwardly, the annual generated a new appearance--starting with volume XXI (2001). Inwardly, its organization, policies, and operating procedures were also amended to comply with the charter of the CUDP. In memory of Jim Andreas, late editor and co-founder (in 1990) of the Clemson Shakespeare Festival, we decided to change the cover and include a special section each year to match the theme of the festival. Although the Clemson festival had its last season in spring 2008, we stuck to that format for the journal, when editor Elizabeth Rivlin began introducing themes, announced in advance, and enlisted guest editors for featured sections. Sadly, the present volume, on the theme of "Shakespeare's Female Icons," will be the last one and the end of a history that began with William Bennett at the University of Tennessee at Martin, in 1978, on a shoestring and somewhat sporadically. After a good run at Clemson University, the impact of the Great Recession has been too great to ignore, especially in the steady decline of the journat's subscriptions and increased overhead costs in that time. We congratulate ourselves for ending with so rich a sampling of current Shakespeare scholarship as one finds in this excellent volume.

Besides the consolation that "all's well that ends well," I am pleased to say that, from our Upstart Crow inventory, CUDP will soon be able to offer discounted volumes by direct order from an online marketplace currently under construction but expected in spring 2013. We are digitizing content for the journal's archive, which will be available for inspection on an open-access basis on our website. The exact launch date is unclear though the two projects are correspondent. The advent of e-commerce and direct online transactions from the CUDP store will be advantageous for research scholars and for students, who will visit us as perhaps never before. Watch the Shakespeare library grow at http://www.clemson.edu/cedp/cudp/crow/.

Wayne K. Chapman

CEDP Director / CUDP Executive Editor

Reviewed by Erin Felicia Labbie, Bowling Green State University