Abstract

abstract:

This article is a reading of a novel and film that promotes the primacy of language in human affairs. An interdisciplinary approach combines Heideggerian hermeneutics with Darwinian literary criticism. From a Heideggerian perspective, one's existence is essentially the hermeneutic activity of interpretation, since one's being (Dasein) primordially entails a situated, questioning, self-interpretation. The questioning of what it means to be is an integral aspect of a projective hermeneutics. The critic's intense and passionate questioning of one's temporal facticity forms the basis of a practical form of criticism. Darwinian literary criticism also presupposes what it means to be human is to share a universal, evolved human nature that includes an "instinctive tendency to acquire an art," or language. Practically speaking, an innovative fusion of Darwinian literary criticism, or biopoetics, with Heideggerian hermeneutics is appropriate because both perspectives acknowledge a primordial understanding as the basis for all interpretation. Further, from both perspectives, the question is not simply whether narrative structures inform and influence human experience, but the degree to which narratives are specifically designed to transmit information and knowledge about the precarious human condition.

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