Notorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare

by Linda Charnes

Richard III, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra―these were figures of intense signification long before Shakespeare took up the task of giving them new life on the stage. And when he did, Linda Charnes argues, he used these legendary figures to explore a new kind of fame―notorious identity―an infamy based not on the moral and ethical “use value” of legend but on a commodification of identity itself: one that must be understood in the context of early modern England’s emergent capitalism and its conditions of economic, textual, theatrical, and cultural reproduction. Ranging across cultural materialism, new historicism, feminist psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, deconstruction, and theories of postmodernity, the author practices a “theory without organs”―which she provocatively calls a constructive “New Hystericism”―retheorizing the discourses of reigning methodologies as much as those in Shakespeare’s plays.

Paperback

First published August 11, 1995

Reviews

[max theodore]

this is very interesting but too dense to read for fun. maybe denser than it needs to be. i respect that theory requires one to come with some prior knowledge, especially of relevant terms/ideas/trends, but sometimes i think perhaps academics are getting carried away. maybe this is my skill issue. either way i will almost certainly return to this when it's time to write antony and cleopatra essay 2 electric boogaloo

[Gabby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall interesting, too bad it wasn't really rooted in Shakespeare's time/perspectives. Plus, the author loves inverted commas and her prose can be a bit wordy at times.