Gertrude Stein: l'identité à l'épreuve du rythme

ABSTRACT: The Steinian conception of rhythm as expression of identity paves the way for a diagrammatic perception of the text. If rhythm is a diagram, that is to say, the image in movement of a literary thinking, it asserts a literal conception of the relation between the act of writing and an idea as its possible motivation. This study proposes to approach the textual rhythm of Gertrude Stein as the expression of a thinking that calls into question the concept of identity considered as the confrontation of inside and outside, of desire and law, of self and other, or of the writer and the reader. Gertrude Stein's text questions the being in the world - the collective being as well as the individual ñ even through its characters, yet they are so intensely conditioned by the rhythm that they become rhythmic characters, meanwhile the rhythm becomes this performative space where the figures of One, the double and the multiple overlap or challenge each other. The interaction of these figures and the nature of the dynamics they engage produce a rhythmic experience of multiple faces which, conditioned by a logic of sensation, asserts the presence of the text as body and places the writer/reader relationship under the sign of becoming. If rhythm questions identity, it is through rhythm that a textual identity may be grasped. Emerging from its movement towards the reader and the desire of rhythm, the steinian text could then be defined in terms of a gesture of writing and a voice which shape it according to the laws of the fold, the chiasm, the circle, in the reader's presence and under the gaze of the text itself. Through its immediacy and its intensity, such a text may claim to ensure a performative action similar which reveals the body in its burlesque dimension. Gertrude Steinís writing is presence which questions as a critical statement does, it deterritorialises and reterritorializes the field of contemporary art where it continues its quest of identity in relation to the other.L'écriture de Gertrude Stein est présence qui interroge en tant que position critique, territorialisant et déterritorialisant l'espace de l'art contemporain où elle continue sa quête d'identité à la recherche d'autrui