“In her theoretical writings, she contrasts identity and ‘entity’ and describes that two as contradictory modes of being. Entity—the stuff of masterpieces and creative genius—she defines as ‘a thing in itself,’ free of contingency, circumstance, and chronological time. Identity, on the other hand, she characterized as resemblance and relation, the mere ‘clothing’ of the human mind. ‘Identity is recognition,’ she writes in her essay ‘What Are Masterpieces And Why Are There So Few Of Them,’ ‘you know who you are because you and others remember anything about yourself… I am I because my little dog knows me’ (WAM, 84). Identity, for Stein, is thus an awareness of self as mediated by the retrospection of memory or the recognition of others. And because identity is relational—continent upon time, memory, and others—rather than immediate, Stein claims it interferes with pure subjectivity needed for artistic creation.”