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Three Scenarios for Literary Darwinism Joseph Carroll (bio) Introduction: The Once and Future Discipline Thirty years ago, the idea of creating a specifically evolutionary theory of literature would scarcely have seemed imaginable and would certainly not have seemed within the range of practical possibility. Nonetheless, over the past fifteen years, "literary Darwinists" have been making rapid progress in integrating literary study with the evolutionary human sciences. What is the likely future trajectory of this movement? We can probe this question by comparing three alternative scenarios: one in which literary Darwinism remains outside the mainstream of literary study; one in which literary Darwinism is incorporated as just another of many different "approaches" to literature; and a third in which the evolutionary human sciences transform and subsume all literary study. For the first two scenarios, we can easily enough extrapolate from past and current beliefs and practices, but we also have to factor in the continuing development of the evolutionary human sciences outside of literary study. That would have an impact on the way life would be lived within the isolated enclave of literary study. It is one thing to be a small village in a world consisting only of small villages. It is another thing to be a small village surrounded by a world empire in confident possession of the practices and beliefs through which it has achieved unification and mastery. For the third scenario, we have to envision how literary study would develop within an evolutionary perspective that encompasses all the human sciences. Scenario 1: And Never the Twain Shall Meet Three decades into the new postmodern hegemony, we are now also at least a decade into "the crisis in the humanities." The subversive metaphysical and political fervor that fuelled the poststructuralist revolution has long since subsided into tired routine. The question that generated the poststructuralist revolution, "What next?" is being asked again, and [End Page 53] with increasing desperation. In a recent essay on the parlous state of the humanities, Louis Menand professes himself willing to consider almost any possible option, only just not one particular option: "consilience," that is, integrating literary study with the evolutionary human sciences. That option, he declares, would be "a bargain with the devil."1 In the first scenario—a continuation of the status quo—a large majority of literary scholars continue to share Menand's aversion to any connection with the evolutionary human sciences. The literary Darwinists stand wholly separate from the mainstream literary establishment, massively ignored, unable even to get panels accepted at the annual conferences of the Modern Language Association, assiduously though silently expunged from citation lists and from surveys of critical theory, not merely neglected but actively and aggressively shunned. In this scheme of things, the literary Darwinists write essays critical of mainstream practices but have no productive interaction with the mainstream. The first monograph in literary Darwinism appeared in 1995.2 The number of books and articles published since 2007 and now in press—a three-year span—far exceeds the number published altogether in the twelve years from 1995 through 2006. In a steady-state scenario, this exponential growth could not continue. Otherwise, within just a few years, literary Darwinism would have come to dominate literary study, violating the premise of the scenario. So, we have to assume that the rate of growth in literary Darwinism not only levels off but actually declines—and all this while poststructuralist literary study is losing heart, on the one side, and the evolutionary human sciences are making giant strides on the other. Unlikely, but so goes the scenario. Within this scenario, we need say only that the literary Darwinists would continue to do the kind of work they have been doing all along. What the Darwinists have been doing all along is using evolutionary psychology to examine the motivations of characters in novels, plays, and (less frequently) poems, concentrating chiefly on the sexual aspects of reproductive success but taking in also family dynamics, social dynamics, and survival issues such as acquiring resources and avoiding predators. 3 For instance, in his critique of The Iliad and The Odyssey Jonathan Gottschall analyzes the interplay between socioeconomic organization and reproductive psychology. In his commentary...
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