BOOKS
161
his own personal good, Tocqueville hoped that citizens who were fully
engaged in the polity would come to desire to transcend self-interest, so
deeply would they feel responsibility and genuine commitment to the
political community. He also noted that charity and compassion could
not be relegated to religion or to private morality, for they had become
a social duty, a political obligation, and part of public virtue. Indeed,
political and social ethics have incorporated the basic elements ofJudeo–
Christian morality, and today we look
to
governments to rescue the
weak and the suffering. True civic virtue may help us to rise to our
better selves, to discover higher forms of behavior and deeper levels of
ethical concern, and to act upon - not just to articulate - the common
good.
SUSAN DUNN
Crossing
the Border
VESTED INTERESTS: CROSS-DRESSING AND CULTURAL
ANXIETY. By Marjorie Garber.
R.outledge S3S.00.
Why is the transvestite now an object of admiration? Perhaps because
he/she tries to transcend boundaries. In an age that shouts, "You can be
whatever you want to be," such a figure has no small appeal. Marjorie
Garber's provocative new book goes further , claiming that "there can be
no culture without the transvestite, because the transvestite marks the
entry into the Symbolic," which is, according to psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan, the world of language, law and hierarchy. Although most readers
will find this thesis difficult to accept, they will not have to cross that
border to discover many treasures in the book. More than any other
writer I can think of, Garber leaps adroitly from high culture to pop
culture - from cross-dressing saints of the Middle Ages to Madonna,
from the boy actors of the Shakespearean stage to Michael Jackson -
and is equally engaging in both worlds. A partial mapping of the
author's journey takes us from cross-dressing computer engineers and
truck drivers to Harlem drag balls,
Tootsie
and
Yelltl,
Peter Pan and M .
Blltteifly, Ullcle Tom's Cabin
and detective fiction, trouser roles in opera,
gay
identity, Hasty Pudding shows, Valentino, Elvis, Liberace, and
"Geraldine," the French courtier, historian and ambassador Abbe de
