Subjects, Objects, and the Fetishisms of Modernity in the Works of Gertrude Stein KATE LIVETT A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy UNSW Submitted for examination August 2006 Abstract This thesis reopens the question of subject/object relations in the works of Gertrude Stein, to argue that the fetishisms theorised by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and later Walter Benjamin and Michael Taussig, and problematised by feminist critics such as Elizabeth Grosz, are central to the structure of those relations. My contribution to Stein scholarship is twofold, and is reflected in the division of my thesis into Part One and Part Two. Part One of this thesis establishes a model for reading the interconnections between subjects and objects in Stein’s work; it identifies a tension between two related yet different structures. The first is a fetishistic relation of subjects to objects, associated by Stein with materiality and nineteenth-century Europe, and the identity categories of the “genius” and the “collector”. The second is a “new” figuration of late modernity in which the processual and tacility are central. This latter is associated by Stein with America and the twentieth century, and was a structure that she, along with other modernist artists, was developing. Further, Part One shows how these competing structures of subject/object relations hinge on Stein’s problematic formulations of self, nation, and artistic production. Part Two uses the model established in Part One to examine the detailed playing- out of the tensions and dilemmas of subject/object relations within several major Stein texts. First considered is the category of the object as it is constructed in Tender Buttons, and second the category of the subject as it is represented in the nexus of those competing structures in The Making of Americans and ‘Melanctha’. The readings of Part Two engage with the major strands of Stein criticism of materiality, sexuality, and language in Tender Buttons, Stein’s famous study of objects. The critical areas engaged with in her biggest and most controversial texts respectively – The Making of Americans and ‘Melanctha’ – include typology, “genius”, and Stein’s methodologies of writing such as repetition/iteration, intersubjectivity, and “daily living”. This thesis contends that the dilemma of subject/object relations identified and examined in detail is never resolved, indeed, its ongoing reverberations are productive up until and including her final work. 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Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’ Signed ................................................................. Date ................................................................. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my family and friends, Jennifer, Brian, David, Mishi, and Elizabeth, for their unconditional love and support, without which I would not have finished this thesis. For her absolutely inspiring interest in and understanding of literature, and art in general, and her specific and intense engagement with my thesis, I would like to thank my mum, Jennifer. I would specifically like to thank my brother David and my dad Brian for their complete faith in my ability to complete this thesis. Whilst “thank you” is not an adequate response to a wonderful supervisor, I want to acknowledge the fantastic efforts of my supervisor Brigitta Olubas. Her detailed readings of the final drafts were crucial, as well as her ongoing faith in me and her positive, active support in the final stages of this project. I would like to express my gratitude to Anne Brewster for reading my penultimate draft and providing productive feedback in a short turn-around time, and all at very late notice. I would also like to thank the School of English for their provision of a supportive research and working environment and conditions during my candidature. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction 1 PART ONE Chapter One: “Nation fetishism”; the problematics and productivities of pleasure 26 Nationalized-fetishized subjects 28 Taussig’s “Nation fetishism” and Stein’s “America” 39 The implications of “Nation fetishism” for Stein’s politics 57 Chapter Two: Geniuses, celebrities, and art as commodity fetish 70 Stein the Genius becomes Stein the Celebrity 72 The convergence of the Genius and the Collector 90 The ‘new’ structure of subject/object relations in modernity 100 The major structures of subject/object relations as they operate in two of Stein’s short texts 122 PART TWO Chapter Three: The pleasures and productivities of collecting 129 The inherent fetishism of the still-life 131 Fetishized objects and the status of Tender Buttons as a “collection” 143 Labour and the language/paint “surface” 158 Language, lesbian sexuality, and codification 180 Chapter Four: Making “types”; uniqueness and reproducibility, mass-production and the individual subject 198 Subjects objectified into “types” 201 The type of “woman” in ‘Miss Furr and Miss Skeene’ 208 The “racial” type and the type of “woman” in ‘Melanctha’ 211 The type of the “artist-genius” in ‘Matisse’, ‘Picasso’, and ‘If I Told Him. A Completed Portrait of Picasso’ 217 The “national” type in Paris France 226 The “national” type, the “artist-genius” type, and the “woman” type in The Making of Americans, and Many Many Women 229 Conclusion 246 Works Cited 252 Works Consulted 265 1 Introduction Perhaps the most basic human distinction to be challenged and “demolished” by Modernist thought was that between subject and object… (190). Gerald J. Kennedy This thesis reopens the question of subject/object relations in the works of Gertrude Stein, her fascination with and enjoyment of all objects from the material—both ordinary and domestic (hats, bags, foodstuffs), and the rare and expensive, (gems, diamonds, artworks)—to the abstract objects that she herself constituted in their “objectness”. Stein’s abstract “objects” will be shown to encompass the words, ideas, and people she engaged with: the words that signify their material manifestations; the idea of Nations such as America and France; the subjects she knew, from friends and acquaintances to other artists, to the characters in her fiction and to, most problematically, herself. All of these objects are represented through complex, yet formal, relations. In this thesis I argue that the fetishisms of modernity theorised by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, and later deployed in new formations that negotiate the interconnections of these two original theorists—namely those of Walter Benjamin and Michael Taussig problematised by feminist critiques—are central to the structure of those relations. The fundamental contribution of this thesis to Stein scholarship is the identification of different kinds of fetishism in Stein’s writing. These fetishisms are those of ‘State fetishism’, from Taussig, which forms the theoretical framework of Chapter One, Marxist commodity fetishism from Benjamin, in Chapter Two and Chapter Three, Freudian sexual fetishism and feminist engagements with it, in the latter half of Chapter Three, and the ideological functioning of commodity fetishism as a relation between subjects, as explicated by cultural theorist David Hawkes, which I deploy in Chapter Four. These different conceptualizations of fetishism are examined in turn in their own 2 terms. However, the specific