Literature, edited by N. Carroll and J. Gibson, New York: Routledge, 2016, 137-â. 146. ... (for example, Goodheart 2007, Kramnick 2011) have lamented how ..... Thought and Narrative Language, edited by B. K. Britton and A. D. Pellegrini,.
Evolutionary Approaches to Literature Stephen Davies, Philosophy, University of Auckland Important note: This is a final draft and differs from the definitive version, which is published in The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, edited by N. Carroll and J. Gibson, New York: Routledge, 2016, 137-‐ 146. I have been assured by the University of Auckland's research office that if they have made this publicly available then it does not violate the publisher's copyright rules. I—Introduction I present this topic under two subheadings. Evocriticism involves the application of the theories of evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and the like to the interpretation of literature. Literary Darwinism maintains that literary behaviors are grounded in our evolved human nature, either as an adaptation that made its bearers more productive of similarly endowed offspring, or as a byproduct of some other adaptation. Sometimes "evocriticism" has been suggested as a replacement name for "literary Darwinism" (Boyd 2009), but the latter came earlier (Carroll 2004). As I use the terms, they cover different but related uses of biological theory applied to the discussion of literature. A proponent of evocriticism could regard it as one among a variety of interpretative options and range it alongside her psychoanalytic, deconstructivist, Marxist, feminist, and queer interpretations of a given text. She might be agnostic about or unconcerned with the issue of whether prehistoric literary behaviors contributed to our species' evolution. But many proponents of evocriticism are also literary Darwinists and combine the two approaches. Most literary Darwinists (and most of their critics) are English literature academics. There is often an ideological aspect to the adoption of literary Darwinism by members of English departments. They are keen to repudiate the
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dominance in their discipline of the social science model, according to which knowledge is self-‐referentially circular, the human mind is a blank slate, and all concepts are culturally constructed (see Gottschall 2008, Boyd 2009, Carroll 2011). They would like to substitute for this a more scientific approach that acknowledges biological commonalities in our shared human nature and sees literature as playing a vital role in identifying and conveying these.
For valuable collections of academic discussions of the theories and issues,
see Gottschall and Wilson 2005, Boyd, Carroll, and Gottschall 2010, and the journal Style 2008, 2/3 and 2012, 3/4. II—Evocriticism Evolutionary psychology argues that our minds, as well as our bodies, are products of evolution. Many of our current behaviors and ways of thinking were inherited from our forebears and were adaptive for them in facilitating their reproductive success. Among the tendencies discussed by evolutionary psychologists are sexual attraction, mating strategies, female childcare, male mate guarding, jealousy, male aggression, striving for status, social score-‐keeping, cooperation, free riding, cheater detection, kin rivalry, kin altruism, intergenerational and intragroup relations, and intergroup conflict. They explain sociality and empathy in terms of Theory of Mind (our capacity to project into the minds of others to understand what they are thinking, desiring, and feeling) and the related notion of levels of intentionality (in which I know that she fears that he will resent …).
Of course, much literature is concerned with graphically portraying
perennially fascinating human themes: love, ambition, redemption, war,
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friendship, loss, political struggle, and the like. And these are precisely the subjects theorized by evolutionary psychology. So it is natural to test whether great literary works match the theories and if this explains the value we accord them. On this last matter there is clearly room for skepticism. Ellen Dissanayake (1999) objects that the approach reveals biological, not literary value. Others (for example, Goodheart 2007, Kramnick 2011) have lamented how evocriticism reduces interpretation to thematics and thereby overlooks aspects of the author's skills and style that are crucial to assessments of literary value. Even advocates (such as Carroll 2011) have identified some of their fellow evocritics as guilty of such charges. And there is the concern that their focus on human universals leads evocritics to overlook what its cultural time and location contribute to a literary work's character and value (Easterlin 2012). But I doubt that these worries are decisive. Evocritics need not confine their critical appreciation exclusively to literature's illustration of evolutionary themes, and even if they do, they need not claim thereby to account for all the ways in which literature might be valuable. On the positive side, they can surely claim that the author's psychological insight and sensitivity adds value to a literary work and that the Darwinist approach to criticism seeks evidence of this. And they can attend to the manner in which the author individualizes and develops the theme in question, these being prime locations of literary value. In considering the work's individuality and originality, they can and should take into account the work's artworld context and cultural background. The uses in literary interpretation of ideas from evolutionary psychology and its cognate disciplines are too frequent and diverse to be usefully
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summarized here. Instead, I offer a few illustrative cases. And because of their brief treatment, I provide little evidence of subtle literary appreciation in the following examples. Ernest Hemingway's short story, 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,' tells the tale of a rich man who shows cowardice on a big-‐game hunt. He is scorned by his ageing wife, Margot, who becomes sexually involved with the safari's professional hunter. In trying to redeem himself, Francis kills a charging wounded buffalo, succeeding only at the last second. His wife, Margot, fires at the same moment from the car, hitting Francis in the head and killing him. According to Michelle Scalise Sugiyama (1996a), women should have inherited a preference for men who are successful hunters. Meanwhile, short-‐ term extra-‐pair copulations with men of high reproductive quality can be to the benefit of children thereby conceived (provided the women's unsexy but resource-‐rich partners continue to support them). So, Margot responds to Francis' humiliation in a predictable fashion. But her position would be undermined if he bravely overcame his fear. He then would become more likely to ditch her for a chaste, younger woman. It is therefore likely that she intended to kill rather than to save Francis, in order to secure his resources. The politics of sexual attraction are explored in a broader way by Cynthia Whissel (1996). Her study of 25 popular women's novels and six famous romantic stories bears out the prediction that females choose mates on the basis economic resources and parenting potential, while males seek sexual exclusivity and fertility (that is, youthfulness). Male protagonists are likely to be bold, aggressive, and untrusting, while female protagonists are likely to be friendly, timid, and astonishable. Moreover, while novels for women are predominantly
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about mate choice and mating commitment, fictions for men more often focus on inter-‐male aggression and adventure, and rarely involve such commitment. Ian Jobling (2001) notes the cross-‐cultural commonness of stories pitting a hero against a semi-‐human ogre. Citing examples from 20 cultures, he shows that the stories share a number of key elements: a courageous, morally upright hero defends the group against a less-‐than-‐fully-‐human outsider who has injured some group members in some way. The hero defeats the ogre in physical combat, usually by killing him. Such stories help to reinforce innate positive biases in the perception of the self and the in-‐group and they reinforce negative biases in the perception of out-‐groups. Jobling claims that this is one of the principal reasons why such tales are told. Male aggression is also a subject of Homer's Iliad, according to Jonathan Gottschall (2001). In nonhuman animals, male competition is mostly for status or territory and the access these provide to mates. Though such competition is often ritualized or even ceremonial, lethal combat is not uncommon. As Gottschall catalogs, Homer's Iliad makes human life out to be surprisingly similar. The Greek bard highlights how, when we are mired in war, human animality, physical vulnerability, and mortality come to the fore. At the same time, he shows us as apart from other animals in possessing the godlike intelligence that allows us to comprehend the impossibility of transcending our animal nature. Meanwhile, an examination of ten of Shakespeare's plays reveals that relations between characters mimic the social dynamics of small groups (Stiller, Nettle, and Dunbar 2003, Stiller and Hudson 2005). The number of characters that are present within each scene reflects similar numbers to those of observed human support cliques. Different scenes are linked through keystone characters,
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thereby enabling the flow of information and the expansion of the small social world of the fictional group. This approach possibly respects cognitive limits on a large audience's tracking of a range of characters. Daniel Nettle (2005) takes a broad look at the dramatic genres of tragedy and comedy. The former is typically about status competition and the latter about mate selection. The enduring appeal of these genres is due to the way they exploit our intrinsic interest in the strategies others of the group adopt in the attempt to maximize their fitness. We study this for the relevance it has to our own attempts at fitness maximizing. It is worth noting several respects in which these illustrative examples are not typical. Cross-‐cultural studies (as in Jobling 2001), the use of statistical analysis (as in Whissel 1996), genre studies (as in Whissel 1996 and Nettle 2005) and comparisons across more than a few works (as in Whissel, Jobling, and Stiller) are comparatively uncommon, as is the focus (in Jobling 2001) on what is a predominantly oral, as against written, literary tradition. Among literary scholars, Jonathan Gottschall (2008) and Joe Carroll (et al. 2009, 2011) are unusual in coding and statistically testing a large body of works. Most evocritics based in university literature departments discuss one or only a few works at a time and these few works typically are high quality published novels written in the past two hundred years. The primary focus is on fictional narratives, but lyrics also have been considered (see Boyd 2012). III—Literature as an evolutionary adaptation Reading and writing originated about 5000 years ago (Gosden 2003), but literacy became comparatively widespread only several centuries after the
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invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Reading and writing are not supported by innate, task-‐specific neural circuits. Neither is regarded as evolutionarily adaptive by biologists. So, if we are to identify literature as an evolutionary adaptation, the most plausible account will take a broad view of literature, not confining it to fine writing, and see its origins in prehistoric oral traditions of tale-‐telling and recitation.
Not surprisingly, the standard view is that literary behaviors are an
ancient adaptation and that they retain their adaptive benefits to the present day. Thus: 'When I speak of the adaptive functions of literature, I mean to signify the adaptive functions of the oral antecedents of written stories, poems, and plays. The same arguments that apply to these oral forms will be understood as extending also to their counterparts in written language' (Carroll 2009, 160). But other views have been canvassed. Paul Hernadi (2001) thinks we are now so surrounded by literature that, like our hunger for sugar and fat, our interest in it is no longer adaptive. The opposite view is that literature has only recently become adaptive, helping us to accommodate the mismatch between our species' current and ancient lifestyles (Storey 1996) or to deal with the chaos and uncertainty of modern life (Argyros 1991, Austin 2007). But no evidence is offered to show, for instance, that relevant literary behaviors have recently become heritable. Where are we to locate the relevant adaptation? So ubiquitous and foundational is it, the human tendency to construct narratives (about who we are, where we came from, where we are going, what happened) is most likely adaptive. Similarly, our capacity imaginatively to create and consider fictional scenarios is central to practical reasoning, as when we hypothesize about the
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future or counterfactually consider how the past might have been. Also adaptive is our Theory of Mind ability, which allows us to understand and interact socially with other people. The creation and appreciation of literature might involve these adaptive behaviors, but it is unlikely that literature is the primary adaptation that gives rise to them. They are directed mainly to negotiating the real world and the risks and challenges it poses and they tend to be well-‐ developed in the child before mastery of reading and widespread engagement with literature (Callaghan et al. 2005, Easterlin 2012). Indeed, it is more plausible to suggest that the creation and appreciation of literature depends on the prior mastery of these skills (Astington 1990). In other words, if literature is adaptive it is not its narrativity, fictionality, or psycho-‐social insight that makes it so. Narrativity does not distinguish it from biography or history; fictionality does not distinguish it from practical reasoning and fantasy; psycho-‐social insight does not distinguish it from work in history, psychology and the social sciences (Davies 2012, ch. 11). In response, it might be argued that we should not overplay the distinction between factive and fictional discourse (Dutton 2009). Both are liable to be creatively constructive and imaginative. I agree. But literary Darwinists are very clearly focused on the kind of writing that belongs in university departments of literature, not departments of history or sociology. And we are rarely indifferent to whether a story is told as fiction or fact. We may adopt indifference to the fact that the creation stories, folk science, or religious myths of other cultures are told as true, for instance. But most of the time it matters to us what really happened and why, and we are keen to separate this from
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conjecture, fantasy, and fictions told as entertainments. (This is appreciated and discussed in Zunshine 2006 and Swirski 2010.) Of course, it remains possible to argue that literature is adaptive because it refines the relevant mind-‐reading and information-‐extracting skills in ways that would not otherwise be possible (see Zunshine 2006 and Mar and Oatley 2008, Green and Donahue 2009, for instance) or that it plays a special role in "fine tuning" or "calibrating" them (see Tooby and Cosmides 2001, Carroll 2011). But I doubt that literature of the kind under discussion is uniquely important in these regards, so this position appears to be weak. This is not to deny that we can learn from literature, or that it allows us to explore scenarios "off-‐line" without exposing ourselves to real-‐world costs and risks, or that it might make us more sensitive to and understanding of people who are not like us. Many literary Darwinists characterize this as literature's evolutionary purpose. For instance, Denis Dutton write that 'the features of a stable human nature revolve around human relationships of every variety: social coalitions of kinship or tribal affinity; issues of status; reciprocal exchange; the complexities of sex and child-‐rearing; struggles over resources; benevolence and hostility; friendship and nepotism; conformity and independence; moral obligations, altruism, and selfishness; and so on… These issues constitute the major themes and subjects of literature and its oral antecedents. Stories are universally constituted in this way because of the role storytelling can play in helping individuals and groups develop and deepen their own grasp of human social and emotional experience' (2009, 118). Similarly, Brian Boyd holds that 'fiction … does not establish but does improve our capacity to interpret events. It preselects information of relevance, prefocuses attention on what is strategically
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important, and thereby simplifies the cognitive task of comprehension. At the same time it keeps strategic information flowing at a much more rapid pace than normal in real life, and allows a comparatively disengaged attitude to the events unfolding. … Fiction aids our rapid understanding of real-‐life social situations, activating and maintaining this capacity at high intensity and low cost' (2009, 192–3). In assessing such claims we should bear in mind that literature is equally capable of providing seductively misleading information, of inculcating hatred, of affirming what is corrupt in the status quo, of reinforcing crude stereotypes, of validating what should be questioned in the prevailing morality, and so on. And even where it is genuinely useful and not misleading, notice that the value of literature is here alleged to lie in its serving both as a vehicle on which we practice skills and as a repository for knowledge. That seems to take us far from a Darwinist perspective, which should deal with inherited traits and dispositions, not with acquired competence and learned information. If there are evolutionary adaptations at work here, they are in the dispositions that allow us to learn from experience and rehearsal. But as I have already suggested, those dispositions are mainly directed to the real world and motivate engagement prior to any full-‐ blown interest in literature as such. One way of mitigating this last objection would be by shifting from classical evolution theory, in which the unit of selection is the individual (or her genes) and the means of transmission is genetic, to what is known as multilevel selection theory, in which the unit of selection is the group and the means of transmission is cultural. The idea then would be that literature-‐enhanced groups outcompeted literature-‐impoverished groups and, secondly, that intra-‐group
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competition was less significant for survival and reproductive success than inter-‐ group competition. And rather than genetic inheritance, the relevant benefits would be conveyed culturally, with literary traditions playing a key role. A few literary Darwinists explicitly adopt multilevel selection theory (Boyd 2009, for example), though none attempts to provide the kind of evidence I just suggested is appropriate. A few others identify group benefits, while making clear that they regard the individual, not the group, as the primary unit of selection (Dissanayake 1988 and Hernadi 2001, for instance). But the vast majority of the many writers who appeal to the way that literature unifies and strengthens the group by confirming and reinforcing its myths, hierarchies, practices, and values are apparently unaware of their departure from the classic model of natural selection. They are also apparently unaware of the reservations biologists hold about multilevel selection (Pinker 2007) and the weakening of explanatory power that the shift entails (Davies, 2012, 43–4). What alternative adaptive functions are proposed for literature? A common suggestion is that it is a form of sexual display. Both Geoffrey Miller (2000) and Denis Dutton (2009) draw attention to the seductive power of a large vocabulary and to the possibilities provided by language for the exhibition of intelligence, humor, imaginativeness, creativity, and playfulness. Literary authors typically prove themselves superior in their mastery of language. This approach faces a number of objections. It looks as if what might be adaptive here is intelligence and humor, rather than the production of literature as such. Literary behaviors might implement these adaptations, but so do many non-‐literary alternatives. To return the focus to literature, it would be necessary to demonstrate, for example, that skilled authors parented more extensive
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lineages than non-‐authors and that literary skills are heritable. (In fact, advocates of sexual selection rarely attempt such demonstrations and in any case, I doubt that the attempt would be successful.) Besides, the creation and consumption of literature often is a private affair far removed from courtship settings or romantic contexts. Perhaps the ancient group's fireside storyteller benefitted reproductively from being the focus of attention (Gottschall 2012), but in that case we might suspect that contemporary professional literature has forfeited that earlier adaptive function. And if face-‐to-‐face storytelling is to be made central, it should also be recognized that this takes place more often between mothers and children, or within groups of children, than between those in the market for a reproductive partner. This is not to deny that males might appropriate literary behaviors for the purpose of sexual display. (Almost any behavior that can be turned into a competition can be used in this way, of course.) But it is to raise doubts about the claim that literary behaviors exist and are sustained by the evolutionary need to attract mates. A related theory argues that literature confers social, not solely sexual, rank. Michelle Scalise Sugiyama (1996b) has defended such a view in discussing hunter-‐gatherer communities. And Brian Boyd (2009) presents this as a general account of the evolutionary significance of literature. He maintains that we are an ultrasocial species. As such, we seek both to command the attention of others and to share attention. Art – and, in particular, literature – provides the advantage of 'getting along (improved cooperation, and therefore participation in more successful groups) and getting ahead (improved status within one's own group)' (Boyd 2009, 108). 'An evolutionary model of fiction, therefore, should focus on ways storytellers, as active individual strategists, maximize the
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attention of their audience by appealing to features that have evolved to be of interest to all human minds, to our shared understandings of events, our shared predispositions to be interested in and engaged by what others do and our sheer readiness to share attention' (Boyd 2001, 201). The concerns faced by these theories are like those raised earlier. It looks as if what is adaptive is social status, and plainly literary skill provides only one route to this. Meanwhile, the production and consumption of literature in the modern context take place under circumstances that are not social. And as Pinker (2007, 174) asks, what is adaptive about sharing attention to events that never happened? Literary creativity might be coopted as a means to seeking status, but it is not obvious that this is literature's original or primary purpose. IV—Literature as a byproduct It may be that literary behaviors are connected to evolution not by being adaptive but as byproducts instead. That is, they are incidental consequences of some behavior or aptitude that is adaptive in its own right. Of course, this thesis does not secure what literary Darwinists most desire: that literature is seen to be foundational to our human nature by virtue of improving the reproductive success of our distant ancestors. But some evolutionary psychologists think the byproduct thesis should be the default assumption for the arts in general (see Tooby and Cosmides 2001, De Smedt and De Cruz 2010). And Steven Pinker (2007), who shares this view, argues against adaptationist accounts of literature and also against the common mistake of extrapolating beyond the observation that literature benefits us to the conclusion that literary behaviors are adaptive for the sake of those benefits.
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What adaptive behaviors could give rise to literature? I have already
mentioned some prime candidates: our tendency to narrativize, to think and reason in terms of what is not actual, and to understand our fellow humans as intentional agents with beliefs, desires, and emotions other than our own. Given both how important such activities are in ordinary life and how intrinsically pleasurable they can be to exercise, it would not be at all surprising that we would invent pastimes that involved them. In any case, this view is consistent with Pinker's hypothesis: 'fiction may be, at least in part, a pleasure technology, a co-‐opting of language and imagery as a virtual reality device which allows a reader to enjoy pleasant hallucinations like exploring interesting territories, conquering enemies, hobnobbing with powerful people, and winning attractive mates. Fiction, moreover, can tickle people’s fancies without even having to project them into a thrilling vicarious experience. There are good reasons for people (or any competitive social agent) to crave gossip, which is a kind of due diligence on possible allies and enemies. Fiction, with its omniscient narrator disclosing the foibles of interesting virtual people, can be a form of simulated gossip' (2007, 171).
William Flesch (2007) identifies a different but also plausible adaptation
as the source of literature. He argues that we admire altruists and those who punish wrongdoers, even at their own cost. Both behaviors signal evolutionary fitness. Flesch maintains that fictions tell interesting stories about social interactions involving altruism and punishment, and about the score-‐keeping with which we monitor and judge these behaviors. 'We are fitted to track one another and to track as well how others monitor one another and what they do when they monitor one another. What we wish to track is past behavior in order
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to respond in the present to that behavior. Fiction recruits this central capacity in human social cognition for taking pleasure in responding to the nonactual' (Flesch 2007, 46).
As Flesch explains it, literature does not develop our sense of social
justice or improve our capacity to keep track of social relations. And though authors display their understanding of such matters and can be admired for this, their gain in status is not an evolutionary purpose for which we have literature. Though he does not explicitly advocate the byproduct thesis, Flesch's theory is of that type. If I were to question his theory, it would be about the narrowness of its scope. It is far from plain that all narrative fiction is driven by our interest in monitoring altruism and punishment. V—Closing comments Evocriticism provides an interesting addition to the interpretative arsenal employed by literature commentators. Provided it is used to reveal aspects of the literary work, rather than simply to illustrate the theories of evolutionary psychology, it can account for some aspects of literary value. Of course, if it is to be revealing it must be used carefully, with proper respect for the work it targets, but this is no less true of other approaches to interpretation that have as their goal the revelation of the author's work and achievements.
Literary Darwinism of the variety that identifies literary behaviors as
evolutionary adaptations is more problematic. First, we should note the variety of different theories in the arena. They vary as regards when literature was adaptive, what it is an adaptation for, whether natural or sexual selection is central, whether the unit of selection is the individual or the group, and whether
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the focus should fall primarily on highly talented individuals or on everyone, as the successful heirs of distantly past adaptations. As a result of this variety, it is not easy to come to an all-‐encompassing conclusion. Second, many literary Darwinists are careless of what is required in showing that literary behaviors are adaptive. It is not common for them even to consider if past authors were notably successful reproducers or if the literary behaviors they identify as adaptive are heritable. There is a tendency to assume that it is sufficient to point to advantages that exposure to literature can produce, whereas more is needed to demonstrate that those behaviors were biologically selected on account of those advantages. And if there is a shift toward locating the benefits of literature as accruing to the group, this rarely goes with recognition of the kinds of evidence this calls for, of the differences between organism-‐level and group-‐level selection, and of the controversy that still surrounds the idea of multilevel selection among biologists and philosophers of biology. Third, theorizing in the literary Darwinist mode frequently seems to be ideologically motivated by a perceived socio-‐political need to rescue the academic disciplines of English or literary studies, or to ennoble the arts, or to put studies of the humanities on the same level of those of the sciences. This ideological component is often more prominent than a commitment to meeting scientific standards of rigor. Many hypotheses of literary Darwinism not only are not subjected to empirical test but also could not be assessed in that manner. The movement might be stronger and more convincing were there an empirical program to support it. And some literary Darwinists (such as Gottchall 2008 and Carroll 2011) have made moves to generate such a program. But on the other
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hand, others question the compatibility of such methodologies with the interpretative enterprise that sifts through the complex layers of meaning that are found in literary works (Easterlin 2012) and object to reconfiguring literary criticism around the study of human nature (Crews 2008). (On the uneasy history of the relation between literary criticism and psychology, see Lamarque 2011.)
The version of literary Darwinism that characterizes literary behaviors as
byproducts of adaptations lying elsewhere certainly is plausible and would find more adherents than opponents among evolutionary psychologists and biologists. But it is worth noting, as I have not so far stressed, that this is not a less demanding option. It needs to rule out the possibility that behaviors that were not originally adaptive could have become so later, and it needs to agree on the adaptations that give rise to these ancillary behaviors and to account for how they do so. Stephen Davies, Department of Philosophy, University of Auckland.
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