Generation

This chapter explores the idea of generation, both in terms of timeframe and generating process. It focuses on Stein’s text “Composition as Explanation,” in which the concept of generation features prominently, and reads Stein’s reflections on the concept in tandem with Karl Mannheim’s Essay on the Problem of Generationsand Wilhelm Pinder’s The Problem of Generation in Europe’s Art History.Like Mannheim, Stein wonders whether there is a formative power at work in generations. The Aristotelian idea of entelechy, or formative power, was taken up in early-twentieth-century vitalist debate. Both Hans Driesch and Henri Bergson discuss it. The chapter argues that Stein reconfigures the Aristotelian idea as ongoing difference. Crucially, for Stein, this implies a radically open sense of contemporaneity, in which echoes of pasts and germinating futures are at play. Stein’s interest in the process of ongoing difference, furthermore, runs parallel to her interest in the cinema, which is explored in the next chapters, “Tradition” and “Cinematic Collectivities.”