ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the strategies employed by Gertrude Stein and James Joyce that germinate the possibility of a primordial being and its neuter sexuality. In the Martin Heideggarian world view, sexual dualism is a form of dwelling that is a presence-at-hand, rather than an authentic ontological drive. Heidegger's meditation on dwelling affords a contrasting perspective on Stein's and Joyce's novels and the ways that they challenge traditional, sexual ontology. The body in Stein's and Joyce's writing expresses this pre-eminent threshold of a sovereignty that dwells with others. Joyce suggests that Harold Bloom's inability to make himself at home in his body or the masculine space of the city is because the male body is a strange sort of dwelling that is both sufficient and lacking. Bloom is threatened with the punishing contraptions adorned by women, which narratively feeds his desire to jettison the prescriptive metonymic sexuality assigned to his gendered body.
