Adapting to Urban Pro-Sociality in Hamsun’s Hunger
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Mads Larsen
Abstract
The rural-migrant protagonist in Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (1890; Sult) fails to adapt to the urban environment because the moral algorithm that informs his collaborative choices is unfit for the city. He often responds poorly when overwhelmed by pride, shame, or other sensations that he struggles to make sense of. Such emotions are hypothesized to be neurocomputational adaptations crafted by natural selection to help us get ahead as collaborators. But with societal transformation, these feelings can become a poor match for a new reality. Reprogramming oneself can be challenging; Hunger’s protagonist must suffer months of emotional and physical pain before he adapts. His journey, and Hamsun’s modernist project, can be illuminated by recent research on status management and morality as cooperation. As literature, Hunger could fulfill several adaptive functions by mapping morals for urban pro-sociality at a time of great disruption. Similar moral adaptation could become necessary in our present era, too.
© 2020 by Academic Studies Press
Articles in the same Issue
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- Back Matter
- Contributors
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
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- Voluntary and Involuntary Imagination: Neurological Mechanisms, Developmental Path, Clinical Implications, and Evolutionary Trajectory
- Dostoevsky, Confession, and the Evolutionary Origins of Conscience
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- White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past
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- The Old Tune: English Professors on Science and Literature
- Behavioral Endocrinology: Integrating Mind and Body
- Watching Film with One’s Body
- Divergent Perspectives on Musical Knowledge, Expertise, and Science
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Alberto Acerbi. Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age
- Hector A. Garcia. Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide
- Samuel J. Keyser. The Mental Life of Modernism: Why Poetry, Painting, and Music Changed at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- Dominic Lennard. Brute Force: Animal Horror Movies
- Ruth Leys. The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique
- Dario Maestripieri. Literature’s Contribution to Scientific Knowledge: How Novels Explored New Ideas about Human Nature
- Frank Martela. Wonderful Life: Insights on Finding a Meaningful Existence
- Susan Mattern. The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause
- Charles Maurer and Daphne Maurer. Pretty Ugly: Why We Like Some Songs, Faces, Foods, Plays, Pictures, Poems, etc., and Dislike Others
- Nara B. Milanich. Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father
- Daniel S. Milo. Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society
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Articles in the same Issue
- Front Matter
- Back Matter
- Contributors
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- ARTICLES
- Voluntary and Involuntary Imagination: Neurological Mechanisms, Developmental Path, Clinical Implications, and Evolutionary Trajectory
- Dostoevsky, Confession, and the Evolutionary Origins of Conscience
- Adapting to Urban Pro-Sociality in Hamsun’s Hunger
- The Psychology, Geography, and Architecture of Horror: How Places Creep Us Out
- White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past
- REVIEW ESSAYS
- The Old Tune: English Professors on Science and Literature
- Behavioral Endocrinology: Integrating Mind and Body
- Watching Film with One’s Body
- Divergent Perspectives on Musical Knowledge, Expertise, and Science
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Alberto Acerbi. Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age
- Hector A. Garcia. Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide
- Samuel J. Keyser. The Mental Life of Modernism: Why Poetry, Painting, and Music Changed at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- Dominic Lennard. Brute Force: Animal Horror Movies
- Ruth Leys. The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique
- Dario Maestripieri. Literature’s Contribution to Scientific Knowledge: How Novels Explored New Ideas about Human Nature
- Frank Martela. Wonderful Life: Insights on Finding a Meaningful Existence
- Susan Mattern. The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause
- Charles Maurer and Daphne Maurer. Pretty Ugly: Why We Like Some Songs, Faces, Foods, Plays, Pictures, Poems, etc., and Dislike Others
- Nara B. Milanich. Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father
- Daniel S. Milo. Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society
- Contributors
