Theory of Mind: Revolutionary for Literature or Just Intriguing?

Cognitive theory in literature is hot, or at least new and still sparkly: the New York Times recently ran an article about how cognitive theory supports the idea that humans are wired for narrative, and I’ve been looking forward to Zunshine’s book as an overview to a field I know nothing about, other than hearing my sister, who is a professor in memory and cognitive psychology, talk about “source memory problems.”

Now that I’ve read Zunshine’s “lucid overview of the most exciting area of research in contemporary cognitive psychology,” I’ve been mulling over a response, yet I’m still not sure what I think about this book.  For the first section, I found myself increasingly frustrated and mystified (this is all there is too this? So what!). Then Zunshine began discussing unreliable narrators (103), and the book suddenly seemed much more useful.  In the end, I was confused again. The back blurb by Uri Margolin promises, “Zunshine proved beyond doubt that even the more conservative literary student who just wants a better reading or understanding of a specific novel stands to gain considerably by adopting the cognitive outlook and vocabulary she suggests.” I’m still not sure what I think about that yet, either. In this response, I hope to articulate the hazy thoughts that reoccurred during my reading.

Zunshine develops a meticulous case arguing that we need these various cognitive tools (ToM/mindreading and metarepresentation) in order to understand the fiction we read (61-65). She talks about how our textual interpretations “will certainly be structured by our metarepresentational ability” (74). She argues that every single one of our interpretations is underlain by our cognitive makeup (100).  As someone who is new to the field, I’ll take her at her word that she is correctly interpreting and applying the latest cognitive research.  Our biology underlies everything we do on a daily basis, so it doesn’t surprise me that our cognitive psychology underlies all of our interpretations.

My question lies more when we take these recognitions and apply them as a theory or as an interpretive lens.  Here ToM seems to be different from, say, gender or queer theory.  One reason might be that your basic cognitive makeup is set—while different texts challenge your ToM in different ways (such as detective novels versus Mrs. Dalloway), your ToM seems like it would remain the same.  In the end, doesn’t that limit the intrigue of cognitive theory? Once you get past the initial, “ooh let’s see what cognitive buttons are firing when reading this text,” isn’t there a critical lack of a “so what”?  If you interpret a text through a feminist lens to examine gender, I think part of what makes those interpretations worthwhile and interesting is that gender is neither fixed nor innate. Gender is partially culturally-constructed, so your analysis may reveal something vital about an author or time period.  There is also the possibility of change—I think this can be an important motivation for why people study subjects like gender or postcolonialism.  We can see how embedded a certain attitude was or unearth hidden assumptions, which makes it possible to hone in on those attitudes and assumptions to see if we agree with them or to suggest a reform. There is no reforming our ToM, however.  Yes, we can read more consciously to be aware of how a text is playing off of our cognitive abilities, or as writers we can attempt to consciously play with our readers’ abilities, but aren’t you fundamentally playing with a set of cards that has long since been dealt (the general ToM abilities of the human)?  Not that all theories or schools have to be revolutionary (or even offer something new) but I think by definition a revolution means change, and I don’t see that possibility in what Zunshine lays out.  I mean, I see a change in our awareness, but not the ability to fundamentally change that which we are being made aware of.

I had worked myself up into quite a lather by the time I hit Zunshine’s discussion of unreliable narrators (starting around 103).  The text takes a turn toward craft, and I immediately perked up.  Here, for me, lies whatever version of “so what” that Zunshines offers.  Zunshine analyzes Nabokov’s strategy for making Humbert Humbert sympathetic, showing how Nabokov distributes Humbert’s thoughts through multiple minds in the narrative.  Sources are introduced and removed quickly, before the reader has a chance to evaluate trustworthiness (104). Nabokov makes the same narrator both reliable and unreliable by splitting the narrative into past and present tense, and taking advantage of readers’ metarepresentational capacities to read such time tags (114). These are just a few examples that I found very helpful, both as a reader and writer.  Here Zunshine took a step down from the overarching cognitive setup of humans to look at individual texts.  From my rudimentary understanding, it seems like this is where cognitive literary theory will be most useful, on a craft level to show what makes an individual text effective.

            This does not quite bring me to agree, however, with Zunshine’s statement, “I can say that I personally read fiction because it offers a pleasurable and intensive workout for my Theory of Mind” (164).  I guess I can now say that I like having my ToM tickled, but what about the engagement with characters and emotions and themes? Zunshine tries to proactively head off such comments, saying, for example, “how do you separate our ToM and emotions?” (163).  This is a good point—as discussed above, our cognitive abilities underlie much of how we see the world, and are likely hopelessly entangled with our emotions.  But to say that the purpose of fiction is basically to exercise readers’ brains (99) is a very inward look at fiction.  It assumes that everything I do ultimately is all about me.  And while this might be true—all of us, on a biological level, are hardwired to be our own command central—I like to think that one of the reasons I read fiction is to take me out of my own brain and whisk me off to other worlds, to help me imagine something other than my self.  This is why ultimately I think cognitive literary theory may simply be intriguing, not revolutionary like perhaps Marxism or postcolonialism.  Sometimes when I read I don’t want to just be pleasurably worked out; I want to have the rug pulled out from underneath me, to see for a moment the possibility of an entirely different world or to be another person and see the world through someone else’s eyes.