Hemingway and Agamben

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.

• PART I: HEMINGWAY, SARTRE, AND THE SECULARAn IntroductionA Word on SecularizationHemingway as Religious BelieverSartre as Religious BelieverReturning to HemingwayBook SummaryPART II: SOVEREIGN DECISIONISM AND THE IMAGO DEIThe Failed Atheism of Jean-Paul SartreThe Biographical Origins of Sartre’s Failed AtheismAgamben and the Creation of MankindLooking at Sartre Through Agamben’s EyesHemingway’s Youth as an Oak Park CongregationalistA Change in Hemingway’s Religious TemperamentHemingway the ExistentialistHemingway the CatholicHemingway the Un/BelieverPART III: THE PROBLEM WITH HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISMApproaching the Masculine in Hemingway’s FictionOn the Quai at SmyrnaDeath in the AfternoonHemingway’s Stance on Animal EqualityPART IV: HEMINGWAY’S MASCULINE HEROThere Are No Happy EndingsOn the Use of RitualSuicide as CowardiceThe Faena, Or Becoming Like GodThe Masculine, Existential HeroCause for Question in Hemingway’s Posthumous WorksConclusion: The Death of God, The Death of ManBIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX

Norris uses Agamben to offer a very welcome and original response to a long-standing critical impasse. Smart, insightful, and persuasive, this study ranges widely across Hemingway’s work and has important implications for how we understand Hemingway’s treatment of religion, the sovereign individual, gender, morality, and the human/animal divide.