Empirical Studies of Literature --

Dissanayake, 1999

Dissanayake, Ellen. "'Making Special': An Undescribed Human Universal and the Core of a Behavior of Art." Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the Arts. Eds. Brett Cooke and Frederick Turner. Lexington, Kentucky: ICUS, 1999. 27-46.
index

Summary

Taking exception to the widely held belief that art is a solely cultural rather than biological product, Dissanayake suggests that "a broader biologically endowed adaptive behavioral proclivity" (27) may underpin artistic production and appreciation. For Dissanayake, art is not often enough considered by evolutionary theorists, and it is usually misapprehended when it is because of two misguided preconceptions rooted in modern Western biases: that art is fine and rare, and that self interest is the prime evolutionary determinant of engagement with the arts. The former limits art to what one might call "high art" in Western terms, which is not representative of "the arts" that extend universally across all cultures and times, such as dance, song, and poetry (29). The latter focuses too narrowly on direct and immediate self-interest, thereby assuming art is reducible to a competitive display. This view ignores the possibility that the arts may have selective value in their contribution to cooperation, which serves self-interest in a more subtle way (29).

Dissanayake's central claim is that "making special" is the attribute common to all art (30), which is a uniquely human practice. Unlike other animals, humans "intentionally shape, embellish, and otherwise fashion aspects of their world to make these more than ordinary" (30). Each art enhances a type of ordinary behaviour. So, dance can be described as body movements made special, and poetry as language made special. Play and ritual also involve an element of making special, and so they have much in common with art, but art is not reducible to either of these behaviours, nor to some combination of them.

Human existence depends on procuring the means of subsistence. Dissanayake believes that "at some point in human evolution, making special itself became part of the technology of appropriation - that is, means of enhancement (making special) were allied to the means of production in order to make them work more effectively" (35). This encourages the making special of words, gestures, and displays, and confers selective value in four ways. First, it is therapeutic, providing humans with something to do in uncertain circumstances, giving at least the psychological illusion of coping (36). Second, the making special of things like tools and weapons which have an abiding human concern encourages people to treat them with care and reverence, which makes them more effective. Third, the arts as employed in group events like song and dance make group knowledge more impressive, and aid in cultural transmission (37). Finally, ceremonies inculcate group values, promote agreement, and encourage cooperation, all of which lead to enhanced survival possibilities.

Aesthetic "making special" relies in part on protoaesthetic elements, which are features that inherently give satisfaction and pleasure, likely because they indicate that something is good - visual signs of health and youth like smoothness and comeliness of movement are examples. The presence of repetition and proportion in any modality also contain protoaesthetic potential because they engage cognitive faculties, and indicate comprehension and mastery, hence security (37). Art engages these protoaesthetic elements to create sensuous notice and gratification. Art, in Dissanayake's analysis, is a behaviour, not the result or content of that behaviour (38). The focus is on form and experience, rather than on interpretation and meaning.

Critique

The main strength of Dissanayake's approach is its attempt to treat art as a unique aspect of human behaviour without removing it from its evolutionary foundations, or reducing it simply to culture. Her notion of "making special" is an excellent basis for such an explanation of art and its origins, but she needs to go further in drawing out the connections between the evolutionary processes she outlines and the development of art, for the two do not obviously follow. Art, she claims, is closely related to both ritual and play. This is plausible, but in her account of artistic development (34-37), she focuses almost exclusively on the importance of ritual; play is conspicuously left out of the account, and art seems to become entirely reducible to ritual. Near the end of her paper, Dissanayake attempts to move away from ritual in her brief discussion of the protoaesthetic, but since this is merely placed beside her previous discussion, rather than given any explicit causal connection to it, it seems like a different, rather than contingent, developmental basis for art. Of course, it is possible to integrate these elements into a roughly unified story, but this would seem to demand placing the protoaesthetic first. There are certain features which give, as Dissanayake puts it, "pleasure and satisfaction in their own right" (37), likely because they suggest human flourishing or mastery. This would provide an explanation for the development of ritual in human societies, which attempt to comfort through presentations and amplifications of such protoaesthetically appealing elements as repetition and balance. The rituals become psychologically comforting, and provide the illusion, at least, of coping, because they draw upon the protoaesthetic. This might also account for the specific manifestations of different art objects, like the forms and colours given to ritualize objects such as tools and weapons. They are made to appeal to the senses through the protoaesthetic elements of fineness, smoothness, and warm colouring (37). These, it could be argued, form the basis of contemporary "high art," being individual productions which are admired by others. However, these promising links are not forged in this essay.

Dissanayake, in attempting to make an argument for the unified basis of art's development, actually makes some points that suggest the possibility of art's being born in different ways. The above disjunction between the evolution of ritual and the protoaesthetic is one example, but another larger one occurs much earlier in her argument. Rather than discuss art as we in the West tend to view it, "high art" if you will, she opts for a discussion of "the arts" more generally, taking participatory communal activity as the productive artistic activity in question. This makes it easier to support her argument from ritual, but it leaves a loose end which demands further exploration, and raises important questions. Is it possible that art which is produced by an individual, a master perhaps, and appreciated by those who have had no role in its production, is a significantly different entity from the arts she describes, with entirely different origins? The possibility exists, and by refusing to nest "high art" in her evolutionary account, Dissanayake refuses to answer a difficult but most important question.

There are other important avenues of support which could have been used to extend Dissanayake's evolutionary arguments further. For example, even in its inception, it seems likely that part of art's function was to help us to make sense of experience, in much the same way that dreams still do today. This points to the importance of narrative as well, which is an indispensable tool for organizing the significant aspects of sensory impressions; narrative makes certain experiences more memorable by making them stand out. The structuring of experience, the "making special" of various elements of perception to the exclusion of most others, and the relation and ordering of these special elements, could even be considered the role of consciousness itself. This makes many forms of art, both ritualistic and individual, an extension and amplification of the most human of human processes, a conclusion which would have provided a helpful connection between many of Dissanayake's separate claims.

Document created March 4th 2005

Dissanayake, 1999
Dissanayake, Ellen. "'Making Special': An Undescribed Human Universal and the Core of a Behavior of Art." Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the Arts. Eds. Brett Cooke and Frederick Turner. Lexington, Kentucky: ICUS, 1999. 27-46.	index
Summary
Taking exception to the widely held belief that art is a solely cultural rather than biological product, Dissanayake suggests that "a broader biologically endowed adaptive behavioral proclivity" (27) may underpin artistic production and appreciation. For Dissanayake, art is not often enough considered by evolutionary theorists, and it is usually misapprehended when it is because of two misguided preconceptions rooted in modern Western biases: that art is fine and rare, and that self interest is the prime evolutionary determinant of engagement with the arts. The former limits art to what one might call "high art" in Western terms, which is not representative of "the arts" that extend universally across all cultures and times, such as dance, song, and poetry (29). The latter focuses too narrowly on direct and immediate self-interest, thereby assuming art is reducible to a competitive display. This view ignores the possibility that the arts may have selective value in their contribution to cooperation, which serves self-interest in a more subtle way (29).
Dissanayake's central claim is that "making special" is the attribute common to all art (30), which is a uniquely human practice. Unlike other animals, humans "intentionally shape, embellish, and otherwise fashion aspects of their world to make these more than ordinary" (30). Each art enhances a type of ordinary behaviour. So, dance can be described as body movements made special, and poetry as language made special. Play and ritual also involve an element of making special, and so they have much in common with art, but art is not reducible to either of these behaviours, nor to some combination of them.
Human existence depends on procuring the means of subsistence. Dissanayake believes that "at some point in human evolution, making special itself became part of the technology of appropriation - that is, means of enhancement (making special) were allied to the means of production in order to make them work more effectively" (35). This encourages the making special of words, gestures, and displays, and confers selective value in four ways. First, it is therapeutic, providing humans with something to do in uncertain circumstances, giving at least the psychological illusion of coping (36). Second, the making special of things like tools and weapons which have an abiding human concern encourages people to treat them with care and reverence, which makes them more effective. Third, the arts as employed in group events like song and dance make group knowledge more impressive, and aid in cultural transmission (37). Finally, ceremonies inculcate group values, promote agreement, and encourage cooperation, all of which lead to enhanced survival possibilities.
Aesthetic "making special" relies in part on protoaesthetic elements, which are features that inherently give satisfaction and pleasure, likely because they indicate that something is good - visual signs of health and youth like smoothness and comeliness of movement are examples. The presence of repetition and proportion in any modality also contain protoaesthetic potential because they engage cognitive faculties, and indicate comprehension and mastery, hence security (37). Art engages these protoaesthetic elements to create sensuous notice and gratification. Art, in Dissanayake's analysis, is a behaviour, not the result or content of that behaviour (38). The focus is on form and experience, rather than on interpretation and meaning.
Critique
The main strength of Dissanayake's approach is its attempt to treat art as a unique aspect of human behaviour without removing it from its evolutionary foundations, or reducing it simply to culture. Her notion of "making special" is an excellent basis for such an explanation of art and its origins, but she needs to go further in drawing out the connections between the evolutionary processes she outlines and the development of art, for the two do not obviously follow. Art, she claims, is closely related to both ritual and play. This is plausible, but in her account of artistic development (34-37), she focuses almost exclusively on the importance of ritual; play is conspicuously left out of the account, and art seems to become entirely reducible to ritual. Near the end of her paper, Dissanayake attempts to move away from ritual in her brief discussion of the protoaesthetic, but since this is merely placed beside her previous discussion, rather than given any explicit causal connection to it, it seems like a different, rather than contingent, developmental basis for art. Of course, it is possible to integrate these elements into a roughly unified story, but this would seem to demand placing the protoaesthetic first. There are certain features which give, as Dissanayake puts it, "pleasure and satisfaction in their own right" (37), likely because they suggest human flourishing or mastery. This would provide an explanation for the development of ritual in human societies, which attempt to comfort through presentations and amplifications of such protoaesthetically appealing elements as repetition and balance. The rituals become psychologically comforting, and provide the illusion, at least, of coping, because they draw upon the protoaesthetic. This might also account for the specific manifestations of different art objects, like the forms and colours given to ritualize objects such as tools and weapons. They are made to appeal to the senses through the protoaesthetic elements of fineness, smoothness, and warm colouring (37). These, it could be argued, form the basis of contemporary "high art," being individual productions which are admired by others. However, these promising links are not forged in this essay.
Dissanayake, in attempting to make an argument for the unified basis of art's development, actually makes some points that suggest the possibility of art's being born in different ways. The above disjunction between the evolution of ritual and the protoaesthetic is one example, but another larger one occurs much earlier in her argument. Rather than discuss art as we in the West tend to view it, "high art" if you will, she opts for a discussion of "the arts" more generally, taking participatory communal activity as the productive artistic activity in question. This makes it easier to support her argument from ritual, but it leaves a loose end which demands further exploration, and raises important questions. Is it possible that art which is produced by an individual, a master perhaps, and appreciated by those who have had no role in its production, is a significantly different entity from the arts she describes, with entirely different origins? The possibility exists, and by refusing to nest "high art" in her evolutionary account, Dissanayake refuses to answer a difficult but most important question.
There are other important avenues of support which could have been used to extend Dissanayake's evolutionary arguments further. For example, even in its inception, it seems likely that part of art's function was to help us to make sense of experience, in much the same way that dreams still do today. This points to the importance of narrative as well, which is an indispensable tool for organizing the significant aspects of sensory impressions; narrative makes certain experiences more memorable by making them stand out. The structuring of experience, the "making special" of various elements of perception to the exclusion of most others, and the relation and ordering of these special elements, could even be considered the role of consciousness itself. This makes many forms of art, both ritualistic and individual, an extension and amplification of the most human of human processes, a conclusion which would have provided a helpful connection between many of Dissanayake's separate claims.