"I'm a girl. But now I'm a boy too": Dildonics and Prosthetic Gender in Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden

Abstract

Abstract:This essay rereads Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden as a dildonic text using Paul Preciado's theorization of dildonics and prosthetic gender. Catherine Bourne's (un)becoming(s) in the published and manuscript versions of the novel are a depiction of a body authoring itself, supplemented by numerous dildos or dildonic operations: fingers, hair, clothes, and visits to Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Rereading Hemingway in the aftermath of the nonidentitary grammar of Preciado's dildonics creates another field of play for the Hemingway industry and the Hemingway reader: Hemingway as theorist of prosthetic gender.