Knowing Subjects: Cognitive Cultural Studies and Early Modern Spanish Literature

Conclusion: The Practice of Cognitive Cultural Studies

227 Conclusion The Practice of Cognitive Cultural Studies In a recent study entitled Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World, Dario Maestripieri delineates the ways in which the ability to wield the cognitive tools (or arms) known as Machiavellian Intelligence have enabled rhesus macaques and humans to emerge as two of the most successful primate groups on planet Earth. Within both species, “as groups became larger and more opportunities for complex patterns of cooperation and competition both within and between groups arose, pressures mounted for an increase in Machiavellian intelligence” (171). Some of the most important survival characteristics, including the capacity for deception and reactions of curiosity rather than fear in the face of unfamiliar stimuli or beings, are connected to our social intelligence capacity. Maestripieri readily concedes that this cognitive system has led to “highly despotic and nepotistic social organization” and describes Machiavellian brains as “effective war machines” (171). All of these negative aspects of social intelligence are on display within the texts analyzed in the preceding seven chapters, especially in the sections that address representations of courtship, honor, and class mobility. However, we have also seen that characters and authors can use social intelligence to assess or even thwart hierarchies : paternalism, patriarchy, and elitism alike are laid bare to a critical gaze. This study has shown that the paradigm of Theory of Mind and its subdomain of Machiavellian cognitive activity offer a multivalent, flexible, and ultimately productive approach to exploring the ideologies and aesthetics of early modern Spain’s literary corpus. In recent years, the cognitive activities associated with Theory of Mind have been studied in a neurological context, using fMRI scanning (a functional MRI, which provides more detailed information on brain activity than older tests) in order to identify the 228 Conclusion biological mechanisms involved in mentalist activity. Rebecca Saxe and Simon Baron-Cohen conclude that ToM involves a highly complex interaction among domain-specific and domain-general regions of the brain, with cognitive and empathic activity in different loci (vi). They also emphasize the significant supporting roles played by genetics, the psychology of language development, and variances in the subjects’ early environment (vi–viii). They conclude that future studies of ToM must be pursued from an “integrated ” perspective of “social neuroscien[ce]” (viii). This diffuse and complex perspective of interdisciplinary study is consistent with the “contextualist” model of cognitive activity that I propose. Concerns about the validity of cognitive approaches to literature may still arise for literary scholars who associate neuroscience with deterministic models of human behavior, which can be used in particularly deleterious discourses against persons occupying marginalized gender and class positions. The contextualist paradigm of interactive cognition and the newly emerging discipline of Social Neuroscience (a journal by that name was launched in 2006) are two important indicators that facile determinism is on the wane. Both of these approaches are consistent with “ecological ” cognitivism. As John Sanders explains, The “ecological approach” to this-and-that follows a pattern that was probably first recommended for evolutionary biology. It encourages attempts to understand particular areas of interest through emphasis of the importance of large(r) interacting systems. Thus to fully understand a biological organism, one must (at least) understand that organism as a member of a species which is itself the product of a long process of natural selection within a changing environment ... And the “organism ” is understood as, in an important sense, both shaped by and shaper of this environment. It is this system orientation, with its emphasis upon symbiotic relations among elements within the system, that is to be emphasized in any “ecological” approach. (5) The ecological model proposes an interactive model of brain, individual psyche, and environment. This approach is embodied but resolutely anti-deterministic, “There can be no doubt about the absolutely vital role played by the brain as we go about learning , searching, and acting. But the unit of analysis should be the 229 The Practice of Cognitive Cultural Studies organism, not the brain” (Sanders 10). Sanders views this model as compatible with Marxist -based sociocultural analysis, although not with the strict formulations of economic determinism. He explains, the opposition of the ecological approach to “materialism” in the narrower sense is not opposition come-what-may, in all contexts of inquiry; rather, again, the claim of the ecological approach is only that, at the present time, under the circumstances of the problem situations that dominate...