Reading Homo sapiens
Lance
Evolution and the Nature of Narrative. (Edited by Jonathan Gottschall
and David Sloan Wilson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005).
Reading Homo sapiens
by David Michelson
In 1995 Michelle Scalise Sugiyama reviewed Joseph Carroll's Evolution
and Literary Theory for Skeptic. In her review Sugiyama observed that
Carroll's book is the first major work in over a century (since
Taine, 1879) to situate the creation and interpretation of literature
within the sphere of human biology ... Carroll's study is at once the
wrecking ball of poststructuralism and a possible blueprint for a new,
biology-based literary criticism. Whether or not his bid is accepted,
only time will tell. 1
In the decade since she wrote her review, Sugiyama and a growing number
of literary scholars have set their collective sights on Carroll's
and likeminded literary theorists' vision for a biologically informed
branch of literary studies. 2 This mushrooming school of young literary
scholars and seasoned professors has arisen in opposition to the rather
insular culture of anti-scientism and radical political posturing that
is commonplace in most English and cultural studies departments today.
Those English professors who use their lecture podium as a pulpit for
radical political views have been remarkably effective at inculcating
students in varying degrees of allegiance to social constructivism
(commonly referred to as poststructuralism, postmodernism, or
deconstruction but here collapsed for convenience sake into the term
preferred by the authors in The Literary Animal: constructivism). 3
In its most virulent form, constructivism regards the scientific method
as no more truthful than any other means for understanding human social
life and artistic production. Predictably, however, constructivists
endow their alternative, subjective models of human behavior with the
same explanatory potential as those arrived at in the sciences by
repeatable experimentation. As E.O. Wilson notes in his preface to The
Literary Animal, this
cleavage between naturalism and social constructivism ... extends to
the foundation of knowledge itself. Either the great branches of
learning natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities
can be connected by a web of verifiable causal explanation, or they
cannot.
Because the sort of constructivists found in English departments are
suspicious of most normative social structures, science included, the
consilience extolled by Wilson is often viewed as myopically and
detrimentally western, white, and patriarchal in practice. The
extremity of this virulent form, however, often suffers from
caricature. In more moderate forms constructivists are concerned with
claims about the naturalness of human behavior and human institutions,
particularly when they concern such "hot button" topics as gender,
politics, race and violence. 4 If "naturalness" is their nemesis,
the alternative that constructivists posit is an often seemingly
unconstrained behavioral plasticity that allows them to freely
reimagine rather than scientifically defend their conception of our
social, political and personal worlds.
The untested and oftentimes loopy logic of present day literary and
cultural criticism has led many outsiders to question the very place
and purpose of English departments within the academy. 5 Even within
English departments a growing number of politically-minded literary
critics are coming to see that strong forms of social constructivism
are seriously flawed models for fomenting progressive political change.
6 It is out of this strong constructivist collapse that emerges the
most recent, forward-looking and promising raise to Carroll's bid for
the future of literary studies, the 12-essay volume, The Literary
Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, edited by Jonathan
Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson.
The sense that The Literary Animal is part of an exploratory
expedition, blazing a new path across infamously hostile territory, is
captured in the title to the introduction: "Literature: A Last
Frontier in Human Evolutionary Studies." Wilson and Gottschall
rightly admit that although "[n]umerous evolutionists and literary
scholars have become interested in exploring this territory ... it
[evolution] has not become part of the normal discourse for the field
of literary studies as a whole." The editors ask us to remember that
virtually every other academic discipline was initially uninviting
toward evolutionary inroads, despite their eventual acceptance. In
order to quell any rising alarms or fears of hostile takeovers from
humanists (the evolutionists are coming! the evolutionists are coming!)
Gottschall and Wilson remind English professors that historically, when
evolution comes into contact with another discipline, "non
evolutionary perspectives have not become obsolete; the task of
integration is much more interesting and symbiotic than simple
replacement." Emollient comments like this are present throughout The
Literary Animal and are one of its many admirable strengths. Unlike
some early evolutionary treatises on literature and constructivism, The
Literary Animal largely maintains a congenial and positive tone that is
inviting to anyone interested in genuine interdisciplinary dialogue.
The Literary Animal tackles a huge topic: the nature and representation
of narrative and its role in the evolutionary scheme of human affairs,
past and present. Despite other essay collections on evolution,
literature and the arts, 7 The Literary Animal is the first volume of
evolutionarily focused essays on the multifaceted nature of narrative,
which is defined here as oral and written literature. This definition
encompasses theater, film, television, novels, poetry, erotica,
folktales, the narrative activities of journal writing and the
hypothesized narrative processes underlying our conscious thought.
The editors believe their collection speaks to three major themes, each
addressing a specific question:
What is literature about?
What is literature for?
What does it mean for a seemingly nonscientific subject such as
literature to be approached from the perspective of a scientific
discipline such as evolution?
The essays are divided into four sections: Evolution and Literary
Theory, Darwinian Literary Criticism, The Evolutionary Riddle of Art,
and Darwinian Theory and Scientific Methods.
To address such a wide range of topics the editors have culled a
stellar cast of diverse contributors, including prefaces by such
luminaries as E.O. Wilson and Frederick Crews, and an afterward by
Dennis Dutton. Individual chapters are penned by two-time Booker Prize
winning novelist Ian McEwan, well known anthropologists Daniel Nettle
and Robin Fox, and those familiar with evolutionary literary studies
will recognize Joseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, Michelle Scalise
Sugiyama, Brian Boyd, and Ian Jobling.
In the introduction Gottschall and Wilson relate their respective
stories about how they became interested in literature from an
evolutionary perspective. Notable is Gottschall's experience as a
graduate student, one which will likely resonate for many young
scholars who are frustrated by the virtual absence of evolutionism in
contemporary literature departments. Gottschall retells the story of
how his evolutionary-themed dissertation was effectively deemed
off-limits by his otherwise interdisciplinary English department
faculty. Serendipitously, it was through this most irrational
limitation that Gottschall met Wilson, with whose assistance he
completed his dissertation.
Three essays from The Literary Animal to which I will pay particular
attention, address some of the most pressing issues and problems facing
those who already or may soon wish to integrate evolutionary with
literary studies. The opening essay by novelist Ian McEwan is a gem
(prepare to laugh out-loud at an anecdote about Virginia Woolf and a
certain stain). McEwan reclaims the privilege often denied to authors
by many constructivists to speak on behalf of the psychical
continuities between author, reader, and historical time when he
asserts that
Literature flourishes along the channels of this unspoken agreement
between writers and readers, offering a mental map whose north and
south are the specific and the general. At its best, literature is
universal, illuminating human nature at precisely the point at which it
is most parochial and specific.
While McEwan admits that cultural specificities are interpretive
luxuries, he asserts that such historical details are often unnecessary
for understanding the human condition at the center of all stories from
Gilgamesh to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
McEwan's observation is noteworthy because it directly contradicts
the hallowed constructivist position that "human nature is a specific
historical product...that there is no human nature at all beyond that
which develops at a particular time and in a particular culture."
McEwan rightly diagnoses this misguided endeavor as "the central
project of intellectual history to ask at which moment, in which set
of circumstances, we became recognizable to ourselves." It is neither
exclusively the historical lurch nor the abrupt rupture with the past,
McEwan argues, but the continual, common crawl of human nature that is
chronicled in stories across cultures. The vast body of world
literature is intelligible and translatable precisely because it speaks
to the most recognizable aspects of our shared human nature. While
making the indispensable point that literary critics should understand
history and human nature in evolutionary as well as culturally specific
contexts, McEwan's essay wields the term "human nature" rather
uncritically. 8 This is no real fault of the essay as its purpose in
this volume is not to adjudicate between competing paradigms of human
nature. The specificity and nuance found lacking here is properly
addressed in the subsequent essay.
Following on McEwan's heels, David Sloan Wilson's chapter assesses
the merits of competing paradigms of human nature and social
constructivism. The admirable synthesis Wilson hopes to produce is
evident in his title, "Evolutionary Social Constructivism." A
subsidiary aim of his essay is to propose a theory for how narrative is
currently adaptive in our non-Pleistocene world. Although other essays
in the volume consider why narrative may have been adaptive in a
Pleistocene environment (Sugiyama reverse engineers narrative; Brian
Boyd surveys adaptationist theories of narrative), Wilson considers how
such a ubiquitous activity as narrative functions in modern
environments.
To appreciate Wilson's argument it is necessary to think outside the
common conception of narrative as simply novels and poems. Wilson
suggests that because humans are constantly adjusting to novel and
unprecedented modern environments in which genetic if-then rules fail
as viable plans for individual and collective action, stories act as
"new and untested guides to action, the retention of proven guides to
action, and the all important transmission of guides to action from one
person to another. In short, stories often play the role of genes in
non-genetic evolutionary processes." Wilson's theory is consistent
(with some historical qualifications that McEwan's essay addresses)
with Benedict Anderson's constructivist ideas in Imaginary
Communities 9, a text popular amongst scholars who study the
relationship between narratives and the nation state. Anderson argues
that western nationalisms a nations' collective assimilation to a
pervasive societal narrative was made possible, in part, by the rise
of print culture, of which the novel was a significant contribution. If
stories are indeed like genes, the success of specific nations in
fostering nationalistic allegiance should correlate with the emotional
potency of the content in their respective "grand narratives." The
emerging nationalistic stories of recently decolonized countries could
be examined in light of this theory and specific hypotheses could be
formulated and tested about which narratives specific populations find
agreeable or disagreeable at specific historical moments. However,
before postcolonial theorists jump at this chance, Wilson understands
that more fundamental misconceptions need to be dissolved.
Wilson's chapter is by far the most diplomatic of all the essays in
The Literary Animal. Demonstrating the possibility for honest mutual
understanding and friendly dialogue is effectively the hinge that will
open or close doors to the evolutionary paradigm in English
departments. If politically-minded constructivists cannot accept the
fact that evolution is not all genetic determinism and naturalized
excuses for oppression, they will continue to regard it as an elite
construction for maintaining an undesirable and inimical status quo.
While others have stressed points similar to Wilson's elsewhere, his
is the most honest and concerned attempt to date, one which realizes
that literature is the "battle ground" on which the larger
epistemological war between Darwinian naturalism and relativism is
being waged. To his credit, Wilson also calls for sociobiologists to
engage more seriously with certain aspects of social constructivism,
principally its contribution to understanding culture as a viable
non-genetic process that influences human behavior.
To begin chipping away at the genetic determinism fallacy, Wilson
succinctly and lucidly introduces constructivists to the concept of
behavioral plasticity. He demonstrates that our evolved domain-general
intelligence allows us to problem solve at the very point where genetic
if-then rules break down. Fascinatingly, Wilson shows how some aspects
of if-then genetic determinism are actually compatible with
constructivist positions. His summary of Margo Wilson's and Martin
Daly's study of male risk taking and female early pregnancy rates in
inner-city Chicago is a compelling and instructive example that any
constructivist would appreciate. However, Wilson is quick to point out
that just because if-then rules break down, it does not imply that
anything goes in terms of human behavior. He wishes to drive home the
point that "there is a difference between potential for individual
and societal change and equi-potential. If by blank slate we mean
"anything can be written with equal ease," then that part of the
metaphor is false." To learn just what is feasible in terms of
progressive social projects, "the way forward for social
constructivists," Wilson contends, "is to become sophisticated
about evolution, not to deny its relevance to human affairs." While
Wilson's essay succeeds in what it sets out to accomplish, one is
left wondering just what are and wherefrom originate these
"constraints" on our behavior.
In terms of literary criticism, Joseph Carroll has done more than any
other evolutionary literary theorist to suggest just what scholars in
this nascent field should do and which models of human behavior they
should utilize. In his essay he delineates a model for determining
literary meaning as it relates to a rather novel but appropriately
complex understanding of human behavior. Carroll makes the point so
often missed by students of literature that
to treat characters as if they were actual people is to ignore the
whole concept of 'meaning' in literature, and to ignore meaning in
literature is something like ignoring the concept of 'energy' in
physics or the concept of 'life' in biology.
Carroll erects his model upon the foundation of "cognitive behavioral
systems," a theory borrowed from Darwinian psychiatrists. Behavioral
systems focus on the function and causal relations between "central
categories of life-history," which are "birth, growth, death and
reproduction." These categories are further dissolved into two
fundamental forms of human effort somatic and reproductive that
Carroll then elucidates through a reading of Jane Austen's Pride and
Prejudice.
This model of human behavior stresses the importance of domain general
intelligence, or what David Wilson called behavioral plasticity.
Significantly, Carroll's model is meant to be a careful and
thoughtful departure from the rather narrowly conceived positions of
sociobiologists and "narrow" evolutionary psychologists who see
humans as "fitness maximizers" and "adaptation executors"
respectively. While Carroll's earlier work endorsed some of the
foundational theories of "narrow" 10 evolutionary psychology (that
he here rebukes), his reconfigured model of literary meaning and human
nature exemplifies the extent to which evolutionary literary critics
must be willing to rethink their ideas in light of new evidence from
the behavioral sciences. At this point, Carroll actually seems to be
ahead of many evolutionary psychologists in addressing their most vocal
critics. The importance of Carroll's essay is that it demonstrates to
evolutionarily minded literary critics that they must fully understand
not only the nuances appropriate for literary study, but the continuing
debates in fields like evolutionary psychology as well. Ultimately, the
model of human behavior that literary critics employ will determine the
legitimacy and longevity of their interpretive claims. To Carroll's
credit, he has fashioned and adapted his model for literary meaning in
a manner that meets the challenges posed by critics of "narrow"
evolutionary psychology, the school of thought from which literary
Darwinists frequently draw their knowledge of human behavior.
As enthusiastically as the contributors to this volume look forward to
elucidating literature with evolutionary insights, it is repeatedly
suggested that evolutionists in the hard sciences ought to rethink
literature "as a source of data that can be analyzed
quantitatively." To this point, the last three essays in this volume
are among some of the first ambitiously quantitative and statistical
studies of human behavior using literature as a database. Daniel
Kruger, Maryanne Fisher, and Ian Jobling use "Proper" and
"Dark" hero archetypes from British Romantic fiction to test female
mate preferences in respect to the evolutionary literature on cads and
dads; Catherine Salmon demonstrates how the sub-genre of "Slash"
erotica fiction is surprisingly consistent with theories on female mate
investment; and Jonathan Gottschall tests feminist claims about western
folktales by conducting a content analysis of 1,440 world folktales
from six continents. Projects of similar and greater breadth, spanning
entire centuries of literary history and genre, are in the works and
will likely be published in the coming year.
Quantitative studies will take some getting used to for many humanists
trained in subjective measures for empirical validity. Many readers who
enjoy literary criticism might agree with Frederick Crews'
observation in the introduction to The Literary Animal, that "such
discourse looks nearer to anthropology and psychology than to criticism
per se." By no means though do any of these essays suffer from the
detached and impersonal objectivity that often characterizes scientific
journal writing. Indeed, a warmth of spirit and a tenderness for the
human subject is here present if not occasionally rescued from decades
of postmodern fragmentation and depreciation.
Evolutionists and constructivists who are willing to read this volume
will be pleasantly surprised by the lucidity of writing, compelling
arguments, spirit of cooperation, and generosity of endnotes, all of
which make The Literary Animal preeminently approachable, readable, and
valuable for any student or professor wishing to cross that rather
illusory bridge in their mind between the Darwinian behavioral sciences
and the humanities. One might say that The Literary Animal has
effectively completed the long and difficult construction of that
bridge with twelve new sturdy planks. When not whether seems to
be the most appropriate forecast this time around for predicting the
end to the climatic shift that is currently underway in literary
studies.
References & Notes
Skeptic, Vol. 4, No. 4: 94-96.
For a review of contributions to the field of evolutionary literary
studies see Joseph Carroll. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human
Nature, and Literature. Routledge: New York, 2004. xv-xvii.
To appreciate the nuance of these terms in simple language, see
Christopher Butler. Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 2002. Jonathan Culler. Literary Theory: A Very
Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997.
Steven Pinker. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New
York: Viking, 2002.
Christopher Hitchens. Book review of The John Hopkins Guide to Literary
Theory and Criticism. The New York Times Book Review. May 22, 2005.
18-19. New Literary History. Vol. 36. Winter 2005. Essays on the
Humanities. This latter volume is devoted entirely to debating the
"crisis" in the humanities.
Satya Mohanty. Literary Theory and the Claims of History:
Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multiculturalism. Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Press, 1997. Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia, Eds. Reclaiming
Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Nancy Easterlin and Barbara Riebling, Eds. After Poststructuralism:
Interdisciplinarity and Literary Theory. Evanston. Northwestern Univ.
Press, 1993. Brett Cooke and Frederick Turner, Eds. Biopoetics:
Evolutionary Explorations in the Arts. Lexington, KY: ICUS, 1999.
Joseph Carroll. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and
Literature. Routledge: New York, 2004.
David Buller. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the
Persistent Quest for Human Nature. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.
419-81.
Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. Verso: London, 1991.
The definition of "narrow" comes from Steven J. Scher and Frederick
Rauscher, Eds. Evolutionary Psychology: Alternative Approaches. Boston:
Kluwer, 2003. 9 19. Other critiques include, Kim Sterelny and Julie
Fitness, Eds. From Mating to Mentality: Evaluating Evolutionary
Psychology. New York: Psychology Press, 2003. David Buller. Adapting
Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human
Nature. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.