Tony Jackson
Two recent books, one by Joseph Carroll, one by Robert Storey, take important steps in bringing the findings of cognitive science to the study of literature. Interestingly, both writers begin their arguments with a wholesale rejection of what we may call postmodernism. The clear understanding is that cognitive scientific claims and concepts are true, and postmodern (Lacanian, Derridean, Foucauldian) claims and concepts are false and pernicious. Ironically, this position is established in part by attacking its polar opposite: postmodern positions that treat all empirically-based knowledge as on some fundamental level arbitrary and, therefore, pernicious in pretending to be otherwise. But in fact both positions are wrong to negate and reject the other in this way. By examining each side's explanation of the importance of metaphor and narrative for consciousness, this paper shows how Lacanian concepts mesh in certain ways with cognitive scientific explanations of mind (as in Dennett, Baars, Turner, etc), how Lacanian (and other postmodern positions) are mistaken to ignore or write off the claims of cognitive science, and how the interpretation of literature can be changed by this integration.