Stein & Empire

Juliana Spahr has a great blog entry: “notes for talk at the panel ‘Why Is Gertrude Stein So Important?’ at the ALA.” In it she argues that the language we see in Stein is a sort of pidgin that’s a product of interactions with or knowledge of colonized cultures.         I wanted to respond to her argument publicly, but she has comments off on her blog. Anyway, here’s the passage that prompts me to reply:

If we accept Edward Said’s and other’s claims that European nineteenth century national literatures are tied to the rise of the bourgeoisie and thus also tied to the rise of colonialism, then avant garde modernism’s move away from European national literary traditions could cautiously be read as reformatory. Much about this work severs the one on one relationship between national literatures and national languages. This story of cultural exchange that comes out of Stein’s work is built more around uneven attempts at universalisms (are there any other sort?) than contained multiculturalisms or respectful diversities. I have struggled as I wrote this with finding the proper term for this unequal exchange that it is not hybridity nor syncretism nor fusion. But that also does not damn with charges of appropriation. There is undeniably no mutuality here but instead there is some sort of creeping, undercover international formal migration.

        I wonder if the term she’s looking for here—that’s “not hybridity nor syncretism nor fusion”—might be Fred Moten’s notion of ensemble, or something like it?         He develops this idea in his essay on Cecil Taylor’s Chinampas, “Sound in Florescence.” The basic idea, best developed in footnote 18 of the essay, is that improvisation allows more hope for ensemble, a “non-exclusionary totality” and that we can find this in “something out from the outside, other than the other or the same.” That seems to me to be a fair description of what’s going on in Tender Buttons.         That said, there are a lot of problems with my suggestion. For one thing, I don’t think Stein’s working/work was/is as self-aware as the ensemble Moten imagines, which springs from the “radical critiques” of identity politics as well as poststructuralism.         There’s also a possible term lurking in Mackey’s work, but he often takes more time to develop his expression of the concept, so his language isn’t as portable as the single word “ensemble.” Still this idea of flaw, lack, complicity, desire, frustration that comes up in his critical work seems useful.         NB: There are MP3s of Chinampas at the linked Ubuweb page.         [Sorry for formatting. The increasing disutility of MacJournal and Blogger as a team means I can give you a linkable title OR carriage returns. I’m opting for the title.]