Wandering in Stein's narratives leaves us on the edge of modernist fiction, verging on the ever-elusive migrant meanings that have been attributed instead to post-modernism. The distinction between modern and post-modern writing is everywhere under attack, as critics recognize that what we call “post-modern” literary devices reveal themselves throughout the modernist canon. In the same way, the rigid distinctions between colonial and post-colonial writings may be seen to depend upon perspective, themselves subject to being reinscribed within the discourses of class or gender.

Still it seems important to stop here, to recognize that after the Second World War the social terrain has once again shifted and that, to borrow again from Benjamin, the stories of the past may appear as though from far away, once more in need of translation. While much of what is often called post-modernist also appears in earlier periods, this does not mean that historical changes ought to have no bearing on our reading. Thus while I may claim that Stein's narratives verge on nomadic subjectivity, and are therefore connected to contemporary post-colonial theory, it is also clear that she is irrevocably tied to the early to mid twentieth-century political discourses that surround her.