"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.