Construction of Identity in Gertrude Stein's Melanchthon

Abstract

Abstract

The research carries out an issue of identity in Gertrude Stein’s Melanctha. Its project is to intervene in the debates surrounding Stein’s debt to William James’s psychology in light of postmodern psychoanalytic models. James argues that individuals construct their identities by selecting only those details that pertain to their interests. The Jamesian model, however, illustrates only a single subject’s ability to think the world, whereas Stein’s Melanctha depicts the conflict between two subjects who exercise different habits of selection. The research makes an argument that Stein’s work not only provides new ways of constructing aesthetics but also new ways to consider the construction of identity. To explore this new notion identity, the research draws upon Jessica Benjamin and Judith Butler’s theories of inter-subjectivity. Stein tests the limits of the Jamesian model by depicting the engagement between two thinking subjects. In essence, the research illustrates how the construction of identity in Melanctha depends not only on the characters’ capacities to select objects of attention but also on the recognition conferred on the characters by others and the social forces that construct identities that precede the characters’ processes of individuation.