Performing mindblindness: Gertrude Stein's autistic ethos of modernism

Abstract

Often regarded as a ‘loose cannon’ within the modernist canon, Gertrude Stein evolved a style of writing that resembles autistic speech patterns and conveys modes of perception which resemble autistic thinking. Through her literary experiments, Stein explores the relationship of modernist abstraction and hermeticism to cultural stereotypes regarding male and female intelligence, as well as their elitist connection to high cultural capital. When Stein exaggerates these hermetic writing techniques, she criticizes the high modernist tendency to glorify male genius and marginalize women artists and intellectuals. When Stein creates a literary style that deliberately problematizes the reader's process of interpretation, she performs as a mind that is oblivious to linguistic and social conventions. By energetically imposing this idiosyncratic use of language, Stein promotes what may, in effect, be termed an autistic ethos of modernism.