Recently, much to my chagrin, I have come to the uncomfortable realisation that I am somewhat of a dogmatist. As much as I might talk about the impossibility of an objective scale by which to judge the worth of things, show me an idea that doesn’t fit within my urban, post-colonial, post-structuralist perspective and I will quickly and dismissively push it aside. Not cool, man, not cool.

So when I came upon this article in The Nation about Literary Darwinism – a school of thought that tries to understand: a) the evolutionary role of literature; b) how an evolutionary perspective might help us read literature – I wanted to keep an open mind. And, in the opening, William Deresiewicz takes pains not to assume Darwinian criticism is flawed or useless – though, it must be said, he does so largely because he wants something (anything!) to replace contemporary literary theory which, he argues, is mired in an ‘institutional cul-de-sac’ (great phrase):

In literary studies in particular, the last several decades have witnessed the baleful reign of “Theory,” a mash-up of Derridean deconstruction, Foucauldian social theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis and other assorted abstrusiosities, the overall tendency of which has been to cut the field off from society at large and from the main currents of academic thought, not to mention the common reader and common sense. Theory, which tends toward dogmatism, hermeticism, hero worship and the suppression of doctrinal deviation–not exactly the highest of mental virtues–rejects the possibility of objective knowledge and, in its commitment to the absolute nature of cultural “difference,” is dead set against the notion of human universals.

Fair enough. I’m not going to defend ‘Theory’ here because it would take too long and I’m starting to have doubts myself. But Deresiewicz does take pains to point out the good in Darwinian literary approaches:

Boyd, a clearer and more careful thinker than most of these other writers, rebuts the sexual-selection hypothesis by noting that animals mainly sing for purposes of cooperation, not sexual display. His highly intelligent, impressively learned and patiently elaborated theory of the origin of fiction and the other arts begins with the idea that art is cognitive play. Humans and other intelligent species engage in prolonged periods of physical play as children–mock combat, feats of balance and coordination–in order to train themselves to deal with situations they will face as adults. Art, beginning with the songs of mothers and infants, trains our minds. Cognition is, first and foremost, pattern recognition, and art is concentrated pattern. But humans are also intensely social animals–the source of our evolutionary success–and the life of small human groups, as primate studies suggest (and everyday experience confirms), requires a constant effort of social cognition: eye contact, shared attention, awareness of status hierarchies, sensitivity to what others may be feeling, intending, discovering, believing. That’s where storytelling comes in. For what are our stories about if not the interpersonal dynamics of small human groups, whether the warriors at Troy or the courtiers at Elsinore? Fiction, Boyd claims, is the way we train our minds for the vital business of social existence.

The optimism doesn’t last too long though. Ultimately, Deresiewicz argues that Darwinian literary criticism fails for the same reason Freudian criticism does: they simply reproduce the same idea over and over again. In the former, we always find that interacting in small social groups is vital for evolutionary success; in the latter, that all human relationships are just varied repetitions of the Oedipal and Electra complexes.

But Freudian criticism is still occasionally useful when, instead of trying to use it to explain everything, you use it on the texts where it opens up something that might otherwise have remained hidden or obscured. And Deresiewicz holds out that hope for Darwinian theory and, even if I don’t really agree, I like that hopefulness.

The other day, when I sat with a group discussing Deleuze and Guattari’s book Anti-Oedipus, my friend voiced his frustration with the book (which, yes, we ‘got’) by saying “this is what I like about Lacan: he can actually say shit about stuff“. There is a growing sense among my peers that, after having become familiar with Derrida and Foucault, Bhabha and Spivak, Kristeva and Butler et al, we are trying to figure out what comes next. Yes, there are no universals. Sure, there is no common humanity. We get it: there is no purity. But now what? A way out of our cul-de-sac is yet to appear and, trust me, I don’t want to remain a deconstructionist forever.

I don’t think Darwinian theory is the answer. It’s too constrained, it’s too literal and, even if you detest ‘Theory’, it’s still very hard to run away from this reliance upon a very contingent, culturally specific idea of ‘truth’. Still – I like the idea that people are working on what comes next. If nothing else, at least there’s a bit of hope in that.