Ignatius and Cosmo Kramer: The Occasional series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 31

Many of the entries in this series focus on some character who is similar to Ignatius Reilly or to the plot of Confederacy of Dunces. This is not one of those entries. Well, not entirely.

Ignatius Reilly is a slapstick hero. He conforms to all nine of the "Personality Traits of the Hero in a Physical Comedy" as detailed in the documentary "Laughing Matters" (see my blog entry from July of 2015). However, Ignatius is psychologically repressed. He defends his virginity. Despite being a physical comedian, he is learned, with intellectual pomposity.

Cosmo Kramer, a character on the 1990s sitcom "Seinfeld," is also a physical comedian. He falls, he crashes. He is an innocent fool who acts on his desires without worrying what others might think. He is not overly intellectual, and he is not pompous. On the show, many women are attracted to his honest expression of emotion (at least for brief relationships), much to the frustration of the other male characters. In season five, episode eleven, this sexual charisma is called "the kavorka."

Ignatius and Kramer can function in similar ways in a farcical plot. Both of them generate chaos in the social group which can reorder relationships. As I have stated in detail before, comedies often feature a small group where some members are lower in the status hierarchy than they should be, held down by a blocking character. The comic chaos reorders the relationships with the blocking character losing status and the deserving oppressed rising in status.

To give an example from Seinfeld, in season three, episode seven, called "The Cafe," George is trying to impress the woman he is dating, who is an educational psychologist, even though he does badly on intelligence tests. He agrees to take an IQ test, but then he passes the test out the window to Elaine, who is good at taking such tests. Elaine goes to the cafe to take the test. Kramer comes into the cafe, interacts with Elaine, and spills food on the test. George cannot pretend that he took the test. His false presentation as a smart person is undone by the chaos generated by the slapstick hero. His status is comically lowered in the estimation of a potential mate, thanks to the slapstick hero.

Thesis: Compare Ignatius Reilly to Cosmo Kramer. They are very different but can function in similar ways within the plot of a comic narrative.

Commedia dell'arte and Confederacy of Dunces ... Not!: The Occasional series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 30

A few years ago, a scholarly journal (which will remain nameless for confidentiality) asked me to review a submission related to the novel Confederacy of Dunces. I dutifully read the paper and critiqued it. The submitted paper explored the relationship between the Renaissance theatrical tradition of Commedia dell'arte and Confederacy of Dunces.

I am no expert on commedia dell'arte, but I have studied the subject a little, and I have contemplated writing a paper on Confederacy of Dunces and commedia dell'arte myself. The author(s) of the paper I reviewed described commedia dell'arte well. They then tried to argue that Confederacy of Dunces was an example of commedia dell'arte. What struck me was that, based on their own articulation of the genre, Confederacy of Dunces is not an example of commedia dell'arte. In my critique, I praised their attempt, but argued that they should reverse their conclusion, and I detailed why.

I realize that negative results are less likely to be reported, whether they are in the physical sciences, the social sciences, or elsewhere, but they are important to the scholarly endeavor. They are not glamorous, but they are important. The paper I reviewed has not, to my knowledge, been published, nor has any other paper on the topic. Still, such a study is worth doing.

Thesis: Describe commedia dell'arte and show why Confederacy of Dunces is not best described through the framework of that theatrical genre. This thesis cannot be handled in a run-of-the-mill term paper, but at least a master's thesis.

Yes, Those Bloody Monkeys Again; de Waal's *Different*, Part 2

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include evolutionary literary criticism. This blog entry relates to evolutionary psychology.

I have been enjoying the recent book by Frans de Waal called Different: Gender through the Eyes of a Primatologist (Norton, 2022). In my previous blog entry about de Waal, I discussed de Waal's perspective on status hierarchies and egalitarianism. Here I will tackle the main topic of his book: gender and sex.

de Waal threads a tricky path through a topic that is politically charged. de Waal strongly distances himself from those thinkers who would argue, first, that men are, in some fundamental sense, superior to women and, second, that our legal structures should reflect that fact. He uses as a negative example the influential study published in the 1930s by the primatologist Solly Zuckerman called Monkey Hill. The Monkey Hill study seemed to imply that humans, if left to their primate nature, would create a society where life is brutish, nasty, and short. de Waal shows that primates do not generally behave that way, and that the observations from primatology do not limit human nature to the Monkey Hill stereotype. He is inclined toward a more liberal interpretation of the data from primatology. Despite this liberal leaning, de Waal insists that there really are biologically-derived sex differences among us. The title of his book is, after all, Different.

Some thinkers who are opposed to the ideological position of male superiority go so far as to deny that biology has anything to do with human gender. de Waal argues that this position is also extreme and flat out wrong. An example that de Waal uses is Judith Butler's claim from the 1980s that gender is not a (biological) fact but a social construct. de Waal gives many examples from both humans and other primates to show that, in fact, biology matters a great deal. Most of the book probes the relationship of biological nature and cultural nurture. He argues that primates mature so slowly so that their young can learn a complex culture. Our biological nature is to be culturally nurtured. One thesis he puts forward is that among primates the young are attracted to imitate adults of their own sex, and they take on gender roles through self-socialization, not through explicit instruction.

de Waal contrasts humans with those primates to which humans are most closely related: the chimpanzees and the bonobos. [Note: de Waal uses the term hominid to refer to humans, chimps, and bonobos. I think paleontologists would have an issue with that label.] Chimps have a patriarchal and sometimes violent society, while bonobos have a more peaceful, matriarchal society. Even within the more male-dominated chimp social groups, females exert political power and show leadership.

For example, within the group of chimpanzees at the Burgers' Zoo, the alpha female Mama was looked to by the others as the actor who had the interests of the group as a whole most at heart, a group function which de Waal calls the "control role." Warring males within that group would seek Mama out to effect reconciliation.

de Waal agrees (at least in part) with the fundamental conceptual division that is the basis of modern gender studies; namely, that one can differentiate biological sex from socially-defined gender roles. "Gender refers to the learned overlays that turn a biological female into a woman and a biological male into a man" (12). He acknowledges the diversity of sex and gender, such as those persons who are intersex or transsexual, but he maintains, "Nevertheless, for the majority of people, gender and sex are congruent. Despite their different meanings, these two terms remain joined at the hip" (13). In this way, he diverges from gender theorists who believe that gender is completely divorced from sex. Because gender in most cases is intimately linked to the biological fact of sex, de Waal argues that gender is not entirely socially constructed. Margaret Mead is often seen as the originator of the 'gender is cultural' concept, so de Waal quotes from Mead's writings to show her support for his position.

One of de Waal's novel arguments in this debate comes from the study of transsexuals: "The existence of transgender people challenges the notion of gender as an arbitrary social construct. Gender roles may be cultural products, but gender identity itself seems to arise from within" (56). He argues that gender identity is strongly formed early in a person's development and that the existence of transsexuals refutes Butler's social construct theory.

de Waal is sympathetic to the concern about gender inequality, but he rejects the idea that the way to achieve gender equality is to claim that gender is a choice. The focus of efforts toward equality need to be on the second word in the phrase: inequality. "Whether the push for gender equality will succeed doesn't hinge on the outcome of the eternal debate about real or imagined sex differences. Equality doesn't require similarity" (14).

de Waal's perspective is important for evolutionary psychologists and therefore evolutionary literary critics because gender and sexuality are important components of those fields, and he critiques their treatment with deep observational experience. He directly criticizes naive versions of the theory of sexual strategies, which he refers to as the Bateman's Principle. He strongly criticizes the Thornhill and Palmer theory about of rape as a natural phenomenon. While he insists that biology, including in-born tendencies shaped by evolution, is important, he also emphasizes that behavior is highly flexible and dependent on context, especially cultural context.

In the last chapter, (pages 310-311) de Waal lists human psychological patterns that do seem to be strongly governed by our evolutionary biology and those that do not seem to be. For those behaviors that are strongly biologically based, he argues that they are not stereotypical but archetypical. In this category, females are more nurturing of young, and males are more status-oriented and violent. Behaviors that other theorists have attributed to biology, but which do not seem to be, include: leadership skills, tendencies to form status hierarchies, tendencies toward sexual promiscuity, and competitiveness.

de Waal argues that humans do have unique aspects of our evolutionary psychology that are not shared by even our closest primate cousins. First, he argues that pair-bonded male-female relationships are part of our biology. "I believe it is this pair-bond that sets us apart from the apes more than anything else" (275). Second, he points out that it is not rare among many species of primates for females to cooperate with one another, but it is rare for males to do so. "Male teamwork is a hallmark of human society" (231).

de Waal discusses the fact that there are deep and subconscious differences in how all people treat women and men. The people who know this fact best are transsexuals who have experienced interpersonal behavior first as one gender and then as the other. He describes some of their observations but then emphasizes that this discussion is not an endorsement of the biased behavior they describe. "Instead, it highlights how deeply primate sexual dimorphism sticks in our subconscious" (252). One example de Waal offers of this deep inequality is a trolley problem experiment in which the subject can imagine pushing a man or a woman onto the trolley tracks to save five other people. Ninety percent of both sexes would prefer to push the man rather than the woman (180). Women may suffer indignities such as not be taken seriously in a debate in part because of their high-pitched voices, but men are the preferred sex for cannon fodder.

One of the book's theses is that a diversity of sexual orientations and sexual identities are natural. de Waal devotes one entire chapter to the bonobos, whose social groups feature a high degree of female-female sex, and he has a later chapter on same-sex sex throughout the natural world. He rejects the claim that this is unnatural. With regard to sexual identity, he cites research that suggests that, in some transsexuals, brain development leads to brain structures similar to the other sex, thereby indicating a biological basis for a transsexual's early and strongly held perception that he or she has a gender other than their sex.

The final chapter of the book discusses philosophical dualism, the idea that the mind and body are fundamentally separate. de Waal rejects this philosophical position. He believes that it comes from male orientation toward the world. "This dualism is quintessentially masculine, concerned less with the human mind than with the male mind" (313). He finds it ironic that second-wave feminists, by arguing that gender is a social construct, have adopted a form of masculine dualism. Gina Rippon once protested against arguments from biology by saying "Not those bloody monkeys again!" de Waal's response is, yes, those bloody monkeys again.

The Egalitarian Delusion, de Waal's Different, Part 1

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include evolutionary literary criticism. This blog entry relates to social psychology and therefore evolutionary psychology.

I have been enjoying the recent book by Frans de Waal called Different: Gender through the Eyes of a Primatologist (Norton, 2022). I find that de Waal has many wise observations about the subject of sexuality and gender. After finishing the book, I am inclined to think that you should only listen to someone's opinion on the nature of human gender if that person is a primatologist. This blog entry, possibly the first of several, is not about gender per se.

In the third chapter of the book, de Waal anchors the chapter on the fact that he was one of six brothers who had no sisters. He discusses some of the physiological differences between males and females. Most of the way through the chapter, however, he suddenly gets on the topic of his student days, when he was part of revolutionary student organizations that protested against authority and hierarchy. The student leaders claimed that they could overthrow the power structure and found an egalitarian society.

Meanwhile, de Waal was studying a colony of chimpanzees in the Burger's Zoo. There, he observed dominance hierarchies. As he writes, "In the evenings, I'd listen to bohemian-looking ideologues holding forth on the evil of hierarchies, while during the days, I'd observe power plays in the chimpanzee colony. This alternation induced a serious dilemma due to the contradictory messages. ... In the end, I found behavior to be so much more convincing than words that I placed my trust in the chimps." (76).

As for the revolutionaries, "Despite all their talk of equality, my fellow revolutionaries exhibited a distinct hierarchy, with a few driven young men at the top." (77) de Waal concludes, "We collectively suffered an egalitarian delusion. We engaged in fiercely democratic rhetoric, yet our actual behavior told a different story." (78)

de Waal then recounts that he was later hired into the Psychology Department at Emory University. He describes a fundamental problem faced by psychologists: they belong to the very group of organisms they are trying to study. "This explains why psychology textbooks read almost like ideological tracts. Between the lines, we gather that racism is deplorable, sexism is wrong, aggression is / to be eliminated, and hierarchies are archaic." (78-79)

He quickly adds, "For me, this was a shock, not because I necessarily believe the opposite, but because such opinions interfere with science. ... Every time I received a psychology textbook from a publisher, I made a point of checking the index for entries on power and dominance. Most of the time, these terms were not even listed, as if they didn’t apply to the social behavior of Homo sapiens." (79)

de Waal found Machiavelli's The Prince very informative of the behavior he was observing among the chimpanzees. He concludes, "The egalitarian delusion of the social sciences is all the more astounding since we all work at a university, which is one huge power structure." (79)

This studious act of ignoring the status hierarchy we are part of can be seen in texts on evolutionary psychology. The textbook by David Buss strongly features status and dominance hierarchies, while the textbook by Workman and Reader ignores them, as I wrote in June of 2022. I like de Waal's treatment of this topic, because he is keenly aware of the limits of social dominance. Still, it is easy to see why one might want to ignore status hierarchies, despite their centrality to human behavior. de Waal himself admits that conservative politicians mischaracterized the nature of the Alpha Male in his book Chimpanzee Politics. He became famous in the 1990s precisely because his discussion on dominance was distorted.

Explication versus Interpretation, a Lesson in Literary Theory

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include the theory of humor and evolutionary literary criticism. This blog entry is strictly about literary theory, but it uses one of my studies of Confederacy as an example.

I have been reading an old textbook on literary theory, to discipline my mind while thinking about evolutionary literary criticism. The textbook is Jeremy Hawthorn. Unlocking the Text: Fundamental Problems in Literary Theory. London: Edward Arnold, 1987. I like this text. It is clear and incisive, IMHO. It promotes an understanding of literary theory that studies the entire process of literary production and use, not just the text itself.

In the text, Hawthorn makes a distinction between explication and interpretation. "In English, 'explication' normally denotes the uncovering of what we may refer to as a literary work's 'primary meaning', as distinct from those deeper levels of meaning and signficance produced by interpretation" (23). The primary meaning relates more to what the words mean, the sentences mean, what direct references the text holds, etc. The interpretation is more abstract, and it also might be more creative, such as when an actor interprets the words in a screenplay.

I tried to think of an example of the distinction, and one immediately came to me. In my 2012 article "The Dialectic of American Humanism", I begin by showing that A Confederacy of Dunces can be viewed as a detailed parody of the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. Then I argue that at a deeper level, the novel can be seen as offering up two versions of humanism, and engaging them in a dialectic, hence my article's title.

My claim "that Confederacy is a parody of Ficino" is established by a detailed mapping of particulars in the novel to points in Ficino's philosophy. Therefore, such a claim is an explication. My claim "that Confederacy is a dialectic among competing versions of humanism" is more of an interpretation. It is less tied to the words on the page and is more abstract.

Simler and Hanson on Laughter, Theory of Humor Series, Part 27

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include the theory of humor and evolutionary literary criticism.

Last month, I posted a discussion of the book The Elephant in the Brain, by Simler and Hanson, comparing its treatment of self-deception to Freud's theory of self-deception. The book has a chapter applying their ideas about self-deception to laughter and humor. Because I have been posting a series on the theory of humor, I offer here an in-depth look at their humor chapter. All unattributed page references below are to this text.

Like other books in evolutionary psychology--such as those by Trivers and Kurzban--The Elephant in the Brain focuses on self-deception. The basic point made by these books is that we humans may have some motives for our behavior that are concealed from our conscious minds. Because human societies have behavioral norms against taking actions for selfish reasons, our brains may hide selfish motives our conscious minds, so that we do not involuntarily betray those motives to people around us. As I explained last month, Simler and Hanson borrow a concept from earlier theorists that the conscious mind is less like the Commander-in-Chief of the brain and more like the brain's Press Secretary, offering socially acceptable rationalizations for the brain's behavior.

One aspect of The Elephant that I appreciate is the open acknowledgement that humans naturally form social status hierarchies. If you put two people in a room and ask them to cooperate on a task, they will almost immediately sort themselves into a leader and a follower. Because status hierarchies are fraught with social tension, much of the negotiation over status takes place outside of the realm of conscious awareness. Assertive body language will signal status, for example. For those of you who have followed my blog entries on the theory of humor, you will know that I consider humor to be an important form of social communication which can adjust a group's social hierarchy. For an extreme example, if most of the group laughs at one member in derision, that member is likely to be humiliated and lowered in social standing within the group. Conversely, when a comedian attempts a joke and the audience is dead silent, the jokster is said to "die" on-stage.

The Elephant has a chapter on humor. The authors' point is that laughter is an involuntary social behavior which can act as an honest signal. That signal is often not consciously received and processed. The authors take their history of the theory of humor from John Morreall, reviewing theories of humor such as the superiority theory, the release theory, and the incongruity theory. They cite Gregory Bateson and emphasize that laughter is a signal that the person laughing is in a non-serious mode of play. They then dive into Robert Provine's findings about the social nature of laughter. They quote Provine that "Laughter is a powerful probe into social relationships." In short, they have a command of the topic. Thumbs up.

Simler and Hanson argue that there are two important factors in how humor is used socially: first, humor explores the boundaries of social norms; second, humor signals psychological distance. With social norms, what counts as a norm and what counts as a violation are regularly renegotiated and revised, often without explicit discussion. With psychological distance, the group regularly revises who has high status and great respect in the group and who has low status and less respect.

All human societies adopt some set of cultural norms as guidelines for the behavior of members of the social group. When we violate a norm, we have to worry about getting caught and punished. Using the play mode, we can feint across the boundary of a norm and then retreat with the claim that we were "just kidding." If we are across a perceived border and realize it is safe, we may be able to redraw the border defining where the norm is enforced. Those who police social norms may discourage certain topics of humor because laughing at norm violations may weaken the norm in question.

Social groups also establish and reinforce psychological distance. Some members of society, such as inmates in a prison, are often considered fair game for ridicule (don't drop the soap). One nation may be in competition with another nation, and the people in that other nation may be targets of stereotype humor. Joking about someone else gives an honest signal of how we feel about the target of the humor. When a comedian fails to get a laugh and asks, "Too soon?" the comedian is asking if an event is still so psychologically close that laughing about it is disrespectful. Again, there are edge cases in which psychological distance is changing, and humor can probe that border.

Simler and Hanson argue that laughter has two properties that make it a good tool for exploring sensitive topics. First, because it is involuntary, it is a relatively honest signal. They quote James Joyce's Latin bon mot: In risu veritas, or, In laughter, there is truth. Second, laughter is deniable. "We can deliver these denials with great conviction because [our conscious minds] really don't have a clear understanding of what our laughter means ..." (147).

They give the example of comedian Bill Burr. On the one hand, he has defended his boundary-pushing humor by claiming that he wasn't being serious. On the other hand, his fans say that they embrace his humor because he is honest. Which is it? Is he joking, or is he honest? As Simler and Hanson argue, the beauty of laughter is that a jokster can be both.

I consider this investigation of humor through evolutionary psychology to be an excellent approach to humor, and it is consistent with my own ideas about the nature of humor ... even if I do say that with conscious intent.

Self-Deception: Freud versus Evolutionary Psychology, Theory of Evolutionary Literary Criticism, Part 7

In August of 2019, I posted a blog entry comparing the Freudian theory of psychological repression with the concept of competing selection pressures from evolutionary psychology, as integrated with multilevel selection theory. Freud, as interpreted by Norman O. Brown, argued that there was a life instinct that battled a death instinct. Multilevel selection theory, on the other hand, posits a competition between two forms of selection pressure: selection pressure for the individual and selection pressure for the group.

I have come across another example of a phenomenon that has a Freudian interpretation and an interpretion courtesy of evolutionary psychology: self-deception. I just finished the book, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson (Oxford UP, 2018).

Simler and Hanson review for the general reader the theories first advanced in the 1960s by the game theorist Thomas Schelling that self-deception can have a tactical advantage. Those theories were then brought into evolutionary psychology by Robert Trivers, in such books as his The Folly of Fools, 2011. They have also been promoted by Robert Kurzban, in such books as Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite, 2013.

According to Simler and Hanson, the Freudian interpretation of self-deception, as articulated by Anna Freud in her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, 1992, is that the ego deceives itself to reduce its psychic pain. The ego cannot handle the truth, so it lies for self-preservation. Simler and Hanson point out that this makes no sense from a survival point of view. Lying to yourself in critical situations could only make those situations worse through bad decisions. Natural selection would have evolved brains with more robust self-esteem.

The empirical evidence is that we are likely to deceive ourselves only when it is outward-facing and self-serving. The best way to convince others of something is to genuinely believe it ourselves. "By this line of reasoning, it's never useful ... to adopt false beliefs that you keep entirely to yourself" (Simler, 79). Because the human mind is modular, some of our motives--the deep-seated, selfish ones--can be hidden from the conscious part of the mind. The conscious mind is the part which interacts with other people socially. Simler and Hanson borrow a concept from Daniel Dennett, Jonathan Haidt, and Robert Kurzban that the conscious mind is less like the Commander-in-Chief of the brain and more like the brain's Press Secretary, offering socially acceptable rationalizations for the brain's behavior.

Human societies use norms to control selfish behavior. These norms often deal with our intentions. For example, all cultures have norms encouraging sexual modesty as a way to keep the peace within social groups. If our subconscious mind can hide the selfish motives for our actions (such as flirting with a high-status individual) from our conscious minds, we can convince others that our motives are pure. "In this sense, the Freuds were right: the conscious ego needs to be protected. But not because we are fragile, but rather to keep damaging information from leaking out ..." (Simler, 89). Sexual symbolism in art and literature is not an example of the id trying to get around the superego but an example of individuals being able to violate the social norm against advertising sex while offering plausible deniability.

Self-deception is another point where Freudian psychology clashes with evolutionary psychology. Self-deception offers another way in which ELC (evolutionary literary criticism) can differ from Freudian literary interpretation. The evolutionary explanation has the benefit of more solid evidence in its favor. The evolutionary explanation can explain patterns of behavior the elude the Freudian theory.