Ellen Dissanayake, "The Core of Art: Making Special"

Ellen Dissanayake (Diss-an-eye-a-ka) is an independent scholar and lecturer who brings together theories about aesthetics, human development, psychology, and evolutionary biology in order to understand why humans have an "aesthetic imagination." Arguing that there are fundamental similarities between play, ritual, fantasy, and the more highly valued activity of "art-making," Dissanayake maintains that all of these behaviors of "making special" have an essential evolutionary value. In so doing, she argues that the humanities are not separate from, but are rather a part of, the human sciences.

Dissanayake's interest in the relationship between science, evolution, and art came together during more than fifteen years she spent living in Sri Lanka. After having grown up and gone to college in Washington State in the 1950s, Dissanayake fell in love with how the arts are integrated into the daily lives of the Sri Lankans, and she began to wonder about the role the arts play in improving the chances of the survival of the human species. Noting that humans the world over engage in the activity of art-making, Dissanayake began to rethink the idea that life in Sri Lanka was somehow fundamentally different from life in Washington: as she explains it in Art and Intimacy, "My intimate life with Sri Lankans made me the opposite of a fanatical cultural relativist: I have in fact become more impressed with the deeper human similarities that underlie cultural difference."

Her three books, What Is Art For (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why (1995), and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000), explore the consequences of the argument she makes in "The Core of Art," that the need to "make special" is part of humanity's genetic profile. Declared "a true pioneer" by Edmund O. Wilson and "ahead of her time" by Steven Pinker, Dissanayake asks her readers to rethink the place of art in their lives and to consider the possibility that the ongoing survival of the species may depend on the ability of its members to "make special."

Dissanayake, Ellen. "The Core of Art: Making Special." Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why. The Free Press, 1995. 39-63. Digital image from the International Society for Education through Art.
Biographical information and quotations drawn from Caleb Crain's "The Artistic Animal," Lingua Franca, Vol. 11, No. 7, Oct. 2001.

Links to Explore:

Sri Lankan Culture, Customs, Rituals & Traditions: provides links to extended descriptions of Sri Lankan cultural practices, past and present, including funeral ceremonies.

The Getty's Art Education web site: an on-line gallery and educational center, providing links to sample curricula for children, virtual museum tours, and an extensive account of how the Getty Museum was designed and built.

"Darwin Meets Literary Theory": Ellen Dissanayake's review of Evolution and Literary Theory, by Joseph Carroll.

Questions for Learning:

• Sri Lankan Culture, Customs, Rituals & Traditions describes many Sri Lankan cultural practices, including the alms giving and funeral ceremony just prior to creation that Dissanayake describes in "The Core of Art." Does the description on the Sri Lankan site support Dissanayake's contention that such ceremonies are "molders of feeling"? How would you be able to test whether or not the ceremonies served this function? Have you attended funerals that successfully fulfilled this function?
  
  
• The Getty Museum's special exhibit on "Devices of Wonder" introduces museum-goers to objects that, at one time, could be said to have "made special" in the ways Dissanayake describes. Is it possible for the objects in this exhibit to "make special" for the contemporary viewer or can they only be objects of historical interest? Have movies eliminated the aesthetic power of shadow puppets and magic lanterns?
  
  
• In "Darwin Meets Literary Theory," Dissanayake states that:
  

  Intellectuals who have found it possible to master and accept the subtleties and complexities of Freudian psychology, Marxist economics, Einsteinian physics, and poststructuralist philosophy nevertheless continue to think simplistically and erroneously about Darwinian evolutionary theory.

  What mistaken thoughts about Darwin is Dissanayake referring to? How would adopting her understanding of Darwin alter the work of criticism? Do you think that evolutionary theory can, as Dissanayake states, show "literature's relevance to life"?

Questions for Connecting:

• Dissanayake describes our world as one typified by "unprecedented leisure, comfort, and plenty." What dangers does this prosperity pose for humankind? Are the dangers that Dissanayake identifies the same as those discussed by Barber, Drucker, or Pollan? Could one say, for instance, that Monsanto's genetic engineers engaged in the work of "making special" as Dissanayake defines the term? Or that the knowledge workers who orchestrated the fraudulent business practices at Enron and Worldcom were "making special"? How, in other words, does one determine the appropriate realm for the transgressive work of breaking from the everyday?

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