The Art of Artlessness: Affective Labor and the Black Mask in Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha"

Abstract

Abstract: In Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha" affective labor simultaneously enables and masks forms of intimacy that may otherwise be considered illicit. Meanwhile, forms of embodied difference become red herrings intended to draw attention away from—while making possible—the forms of homosocial intimacy and knowledge-making that constitute unpaid, gendered labor. While the story of "Melanctha" ostensibly hinges on a young Black woman's vexed relations of care, it is also a story about modernist storytelling, drawing on and concealing the work of Blackness as it makes possible Stein's innovations in form. The narrator seems invested in portraying Melanctha as an unwittingly unreliable character, emphasizing that she lacks the knowledge, intentionality, and memory required to tell stories. That Stein can shape a narrative with apparent artlessness is significant when considering the influence of the African mask on her formal experimentation. This essay contends that affective labor is what binds artlessness, artifice, and embodied difference together in Stein's novella. While others have argued that the Black mask reveals and facilitates the expression of non-normative forms of intimacy in "Melanctha," I claim that by performing its crucial secret-keeping function, the mask—and the affective labor it represents—cannot help but reveal itself. Drawing inspiration from the works of Arlie Hochschild, Silvia Federici, and Sianne Ngai, this essay reframes affective labor as a deliberate and affirmative practice by which people employ their feelings to leverage social interactions, acquire knowledge, and navigate structures of power.