Doris Lessing’s Evolutionary Epic

Chapter 1 reads Doris Lessing’s space fiction sequence Canopus in Argus: Archives as a critical response to the sociobiology controversy of the 1970s. It argues that Lessing deploys the Sufi theory of cosmic evolution to challenge the atomism and reductionism of neo-Darwinian sociobiology and draws attention to the parallels between Lessing’s reflections on the encounter between subject and world and the philosophy of A.N. Whitehead. It also argues that Lessing’s fiction undermines the stereotypes of race and sex which are associated with sociobiology’s genetic determinism. It is suggested that The Marriages between Zones Three, Four and Five offers a close analysis of the biosocial formation of gendered dispositions while the Canopus sequence as a whole underscores the co-implication of genetics, race, and empire, in the colonial past as well as in the intergalactic future.

A.S. Byatt’s Biological Reason

Chapter 2 places A.S. Byatt’s four-volume novel sequence the Quartet in the context of Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, a frequent point of reference for her fiction. It traces her engagement with the question of genetic determinism, which she reads through the lens of a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, and her exploration of alternative theories of ‘soft inheritance’. It notes her interest in neo-Darwinian theories of sex (especially those of John Maynard Smith) and her awareness of the problematic imbrication of these theories with current social assumptions, especially in a period just on the cusp of second-wave feminism. It also considers her reflections on changes in scientific methodology, from the origins of botany in the taxonomy of Linnaeus to present-day awareness of anthropogenic climate change.

Introduction: The Secret of Life

This chapter outlines the debates over the genetic origins of human nature which form the wider context of the literature discussed in this book. It traces the rise of gene-centric neo-Darwinism in the late twentieth century and its mediation by popular science books which made claims about the causes of human behaviour which directly challenged humanistic values. It explores the ways in which novelists responded to this challenge, at a time when the arts and social sciences espoused social constructivism and were opposed to any biological account of human nature. It then considers the factors which have brought about a rapprochement between literature and biology, as genetic determinism has been supplanted by a post-genomic perspective which emphasizes the openness of the genome to environmental factors, while twenty-first century writers and philosophers increasingly represent humans and the environment as mutually constitutive.

Postgenomic Histories

Chapter 5 explores literary texts which develop postgenomic perspectives. Margaret Drabble’s novel-memoir The Peppered Moth mobilizes neo-Lamarckian theories to challenge neo-Darwinian views of inheritance. In tracing the experience of social defeat and its impact across generations, it invokes a process close to transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, opening up questions about the biological transmission of social disadvantage. Jackie Kay’s memoir Red Dust Road also pushes against the limits of neo-Darwinian theory, demonstrating that nurture as well as nature can be somatically inscribed, anticipating research in epigenetics which demonstrates that experience can act as a cue for the modification of gene expression. It contrasts the love Kay receives in early life, which builds an enduring resilience, with the experience of racism associated with her brother’s adoption, which generates lasting insecurity. Catherine Malabou’s work on positive and negative plasticity illuminates these divergent trajectories.

Clone Lives

Chapter 4 focuses on fiction which responds to the prospect of human cloning following the birth of Dolly the sheep. Eva Hoffman’s novel The Secret deploys the trope of the clone to figure the sense of inauthenticity experienced by many second-generation Holocaust survivors and goes on to examine cloning’s potential to dislodge sexual reproduction as the cornerstone of the social order. Drawing on the work of Catherine Malabou, the chapter follows Hoffman’s representation of the clone as a figure portending the disruption of genealogy. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is read in the light of Giorgio Agamben’s theorization of ‘bare life’ and ‘states of exception’ and the novel’s clones are seen to represent those who are relegated to the category of bare life in contemporary global biopolitics, notably refugees and asylum seekers. The clones are also linked with Agamben’s understanding of the enigmatic relationship between the human and the animal and his concept of indifference and emphasis on a subjectivity which precedes the construction of identity and difference.

Ian McEwan

Chapter 3 considers Ian McEwan’s engagement with neo-Darwinism in its manifestation as evolutionary psychology. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, human behaviour is driven by genetic self-interest and society is structured around competition, while our tendency to self-deception disguises our motives from ourselves and others. This bleak view of human nature, which was promoted in the 1990s by influential figures such as Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker, informs the characterization and plot of McEwan’s major novels (Enduring Love, Atonement, and Saturday). It also inflects the movement known as literary Darwinism, with which McEwan was closely associated. Having charted McEwan’s tight connections with neo-Darwinism, the chapter concludes with a reading of his recent novel Nutshell (2016) as a witty subversion of the neo-Darwinian orthodoxies which shaped his earlier work