Examines the life and works of Ernest Hemingway through the lens of posthumanism
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Presents Hemingway as posthumanist, challenging the standard view that Hemingway was either a secular humanist or a Christian humanist
Delivers unprecedented interpretations of Hemingway and his works
Opens fresh paths of inquiry for scholars and students and empowers a new area of study to flourish
Ernest Hemingway is often recognised for his contributions to the intellectual and artistic experimentation of his day, including modernism, primitivism, naturalism and creative nonfiction. He has also long been situated in debates about the environment, often receiving criticism for his hunting practices and taken as iconic of an aggressive masculinity. This collection considers another influential artistic and intellectual formation that has particular resonance for reading Hemingway, despite postdating his life by more than a decade: posthumanism. The contributions highlight the many resonances between Hemingway's life and writing and the notions of posthumanism, including, for example: Hemingway’s emphasis on a human creaturely life; his insistence on human participation in genuine ecologies; his use of and writing about technologies and prosthetics (as in cases of injury); and his scepticism about forces of modernity, economic development, labour norms and more. The collection also shows how investigating Hemingway alongside posthumanism can yield new insights about this author and contribute to posthumanist thought and practice.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Hemingway’s Proto-Posthumanism, Ryan Hediger
Part I. Nature 1. "Erosions in a fishless desert": The Old Man and the Sea as Atomic Parable Susan F. Beegel 2. Waste Is a Humanist Fiction: Hemingway, Fishing, and the Problem of a Posthumanist Ecology John Larison 3. Death and the "Persevering Traveler": Reconsidering Posthumanism in Ernest Hemingway’s "A Natural History of the Dead" Raymond Malewitz 4. Religious Atheists: W. H. Hudson, Death, and Posthumanism in The Garden of Eden Michael Kim Roos
Part II. Animality 5. Fathers, Lovers, and Friend Killers: Rearticulating Gender and Race via Species in Hemingway Cary Wolfe 6. "Papa, please try to act like a human being": Moving Beyond White Masculinity in Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa and Under Kilimanjaro Katie Warczak 7. Before Posthumanism: Indigenous Cosmologies in Ernest Hemingway’s Early Writing Elena Zolotariov 8. Beyond Humanity, Beyond Race in Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden Marcos Antonio Norris 9. "Just smell them. Aren’t they lovely?": Olfaction and Trans-Species Imagination in Ernest Hemingway’s Works Lay Sion Ng
Part III. Ethics 10. "The truck had spoiled it": Hemingway and the Specter of Fossil Capitalism Megan Cole 11. Intoxication, Posthumanism, and Hemingway: Toward an Ethics of/for Compelling Experience Ryan Hediger 12. Dead Leaves and Wild Birds: Reading A Farewell to Arms from a Posthumanist Perspective Lisa Tyler
Afterword: Following Hemingway through the Bush Marcos Antonio Norris
Rarely do you find a breakthrough anthology. This is one. Norris and Hediger provide a lucid introduction to posthumanism. They assemble a diverse collection of fine essays which demonstrate the relevance and freshness of this approach to both Hemingway the man and his works.
Marcos Antonio Norris is a lecturer in the School of Writing, Literature and Film at Oregon State University. He is the author of Hemingway and Agamben: Finding Religion Without God (2023) and the co-editor of Agamben and the Existentialists (2021). Norris has authored more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles, most recently including 'Reading ‘On the Quai at Smyrna’ and ‘A Natural History of the Dead’ in Consideration of Hemingway’s Anti-Humanism' with The Hemingway Review and 'Francis Macomber, the Matador: Reading Hemingway’s ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’' with Studies in the American Short Story.
Ryan Hediger is Professor and Undergraduate Studies Coordinator in the English department at Kent State University. He is the author of Homesickness: Of Trauma and the Longing for Place in a Changing Environment (2019), the editor of Planet Work: Rethinking Labor and Leisure in the Anthropocene (2023), the editor of Animals and War: Studies of Europe and North America (2013) and the co-editor of Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (2009). Hediger has authored more than twenty peer-reviewed articles and chapters on Hemingway, ecocriticism, and animal studies, most recently including '‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ as an Allegory of the Anthropocene' in The Hemingway Review and 'Becoming with Animals: Sympoiesis and the Ecology of Meaning in London and Hemingway' in Studies in American Naturalism.
