Literary Theory

Series 2: Handout #8

Renee Francis, “Gene/Meme Covariation in Ashdown Forest: Pooh and the Consilience of Knowledge.” A parody of a certain type of ecocriticism, or, perhaps more broadly, behaviorist criticism influenced by E. O. Wilson, a Harvard biologist who studies ants, known by literary scholars mainly for his book, Consilience (1998), and the meme theory of Richard Dawkins (i.e., that human behaviors function in gene-like ways). One purpose of this kind of behaviorist criticism is to undermine strict social constructionism of the type promoted by Marxian critics like Foucault; they want to show how humans are hard-wired by genes and behavior to create certain kinds of works. Beavers build dams, we weave words. Until recently, the harder forms of empirical, science-influenced literary criticism have been a ticket to career suicide, as Francis’ fate suggests, because the Marxian, social-constructionist school does not respect the truth-claims of science (being an instrument of Western oppression, patriarchy, etc.), and, perhaps, because humanists are mostly not talented at mathematics and science. On the other hand, as Tom Wolfe observed in I Am Charlotte Simmons, big money is now going to neuroscience (embodied, perhaps, by Stephen Pinker and his blockbuster, The Blank Slate), and some literary critics may become fleas riding on the back of this 900-pound gorilla while big-pharma—with the consilience of academic administrators desiring big grant bucks—gradually let the social constructionist humanists die off like the dodo and the mastodon. Of course, one problem remains: what will become of FREE WILL (to say nothing of “Truth” and “Love”) under the regime of the literary neuroscientists/bio-determinists/bio-poeticist robots?

Lawrence Buell

Ecocriticism or “Green Studies” considers the relationship between texts and the environment, including both traditional notions of the pastoral but, increasingly urban environments as well and issues of environmental justice. Ecocriticism, in general, is science-influenced and politically-activist (Marxian, anti-capitalist, pro-animal rights, partly allied with feminism as “ecofeminism”) but it is still primarily—though not absolutely—social constuctivist in outlook. Nature really exists, and the hole in the ozone layer can kill us. BUT—the meaning of this reality is still a function of language and culture. It started in the early 90s with Lawrence Buell (see The Environmental Imagination) among a few other works. The movement has been most popular among literary Americanists who are interested in Thoreau and his influence down to the present in writers such as Rachel Carson and Leslie Marmon Silko. English ecocritics tend to start with Wordsworth.