Zachary Norwood, PhD. student, University of Auckland

“Grounded cognition,” a theoretical framework developed in the neurosciences, explains how intersubjective memory instantiates within modality-specific systems (vision, emotion, taste, sound) and how these systems function concertedly to produce “situated simulations” of textual contents. In this paper, I argue that in addition to “embodied intersubjectivity” and cross-cultural explanations we need “embodied intra-subjectivity” and intra-cultural explanations. That is, we need to understand how definitive autobiographic memories form social psychological divisions (e.g., “conservative,” “progressive,” “lowbrow,” “highbrow”), and how these divisions influence reader-response. Varying autobiographic memories (educational, socioeconomic, political), personalities (introversion, extroversion), constitutional attributes (intelligence, strength, sensitivity), and so forth, modulate performance reception between groups and individuals. Thus what is intersubjective at one level may be intra-subjectively modulated at another. Identifying intra-subjective differences at the group level, I conjecture, may explain divergent interpretations of a particular text. I shall test this conjecture by surveying divergent critical responses to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. On the one hand, I shall discuss intersubjective representations of, and emotional responses to, Coriolanus as a function of grounded cognition (modality-specification, affect programs, etc.); on the other, I shall explore divergent, intra-subjective interpretations as a function of social psychological differences between groups.