Gertrude Stein’s Autobiographical Poses: From Identity to Entity

The dominant pattern in the Western hermeneutics has been to view autobiography as an occasion for the celebration of the individual. This article tackles the dialectics between identity and entity, between self and other, and between genius and “everybody” in two of Gertrude Stein’s autobiographies: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Everybody’s Autobiography. Drawing on associations between autobiography and photography, I highlight the performativity of Stein’s autobiographical self, suggest posing as a metaphor for the autobiographical act, and discuss Gertrude Stein’s move from the question of identity to the question of genius as entity