Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, and the Modernist Loss of Autonomy

Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, and the Modernist Loss of Autonomy proposes a new understanding of modernist autonomy and the ways in which it conditioned the features of modernist texts and works of art. Rather than positing it as a strictly textual phenomenon, a hallmark of both canonical and revisionary modernist criticism, I locate modernist autonomy within the affective experience of Duchamp and Stein as they navigated the modernist cultural field. With Duchamp, I examine the way he competed with other artists for cultural capital and his embattled relation to exhibiting his work; with Stein, I look at her tense engagement with the act of lecturing and the consequences of her attempt to win general acclaim through an accessible work of autobiography. In all of these experiences, Duchamp and Stein forfeited or were stripped of a particular form of autonomy – what I am calling impersonal autonomy – that was central not only to their affective experience but also to their works. They sought to remain unidentifiable, to avoid the publicization of their personal selves, an aim that conflicted with their commitment to forging successful modernist careers. The loss of autonomy that emerged, again and again, out of this contradictory position resulted in works of art and literature in which the qualities commonly associated with the aesthetics of modernist autonomy are embattled and transformed. These works are marked by the following four features: the reassertion of autonomy; the presence of the authorial/artistic self; the manifestation of an array of “ugly feelings”; and a hostile relation to the reader/viewer. In exploring these features, I show the way that modernist autonomy – when considered at the level of affective experience – becomes a generative force in the wake of its loss.