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Darwin and Derrida: Cognitive Literary Theory As a Species of Post-Structuralism

English, Bar-Ilan

ABSTRACT

Rather than denying the insights of post-structuralist theory, literary interpretation and theory with an evolutionary cognitive perspective actually nestles nicely within a central niche of deconstructionist thinking, that is, the critique of representation. What we learn from recent cognitive science is that the meanings of texts are indeed unstable and dependent upon contingent contexts. While theories of neuronal activity can be understood as analogous to the critique of representation, the cognitive evolutionary argument supports Stanley Cavell's counterproposal, that is, that while our representational powers are not ideal they are sufficient. It is possible then to argue further that the very flexibility that destabilizes meaning is not only good enough, it is responsible for our success, such as it has been, in building and revising human cultures.

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