Science

I’ve just started to dip my toes (a bit warily) into the work in cognitive science and literature.

Because of my interest in reading, I’ve been more aware of studies (mostly from  neuoroscience rather than cognitive science) that look at what happens in the brain when we read; my reading here has been primarily works directed at popular audiences (like Stanilas Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain ).  Lisa Zunshine’s Why We Read Fiction was my first sustained encounter with an approach that tries to combine cognitive psychology and literary interpretation.

I’m not close to being finished with the pile of books I need to read to catch up with this conversation, but I have to admit that I’m feeling a bit skeptical.

Zunshine’s book is fascinating and, as many have noted, takes a truly interdisciplinary approach.  Her close readings are engaging and her explanations of the terms of cognitive science are clear without seeming overly simplified. But I’m not sure I actually learned anything new about the novels she examined.  Does adding the idea of metarepresentation really add to our understanding of Lovelace as either an unreliable narrator, or a character who lies even to himself?  It’s true that having terms like metarepresentation and source tags help us break down particular moments in the narrative, and help explain our attraction to the novel in the first place (which is, of course, her argument). Ultimately though, I didn’t find myself reconsidering any of the interpretive lines of thought already existing around Clarissa. On the other hand, I found myself very convinced by her discussions of how she has used these ideas in her classroom. Giving students the terms—the idea of source tags and levels of metarepresentation—makes a great deal of sense in for texts like Clarissa, or her other key examples, Lolita and Mrs Dalloway. 

For me it is always a small step from how we presents ideas in the classroom to how we present ideas to the wider community. So I have found myself wondering whether interdisciplinary approaches like this could and should be used to articulate the ongoing significance of the humanities? (Or maybe they are and I haven’t been reading the right books? Suggestions welcome!)  I say this knowing that my students (not students studying primarily literature, but in a general education writing course), who, when asked during one particular unit to consider the significance of reading, are quite convinced by assertions that the “brain’s synaptic connections are coevolving with an environment in which media consumption is a dominant factor.” * They are less convinced by Frederick Douglass’ (to my mind quite moving) account of learning to read, or the claim Azar Nafisi makes that “what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.”**

I’m not saying I LIKE this fact, or that I think it isn’t a misperception about literature and literary conceptions of the world that in itself might stand to be corrected (I do my best!). But if we are using interdisciplinary approaches--and in particular the new sciences of the brain and theories of the mind--should we be doing so simply to create more ‘readings’ or should that energy be directed at other objects / objectives?

As I was working on this over the last few days, an exchange in the Stone came to my attention.  Some of these issues are articulated there much more gracefully! 

*N. Katherine Hayles, “Hyper and Deep Attention:  The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes,” in Profession (2007): 192.  

** Reading Lolita in Tehran, (New York:  Random House, 2003, 2007), 3.