Inheriting life experience: Olga Tokarczuk, Zakes Mda, & scientific findings
Literary fiction, discussion
The protagonist of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones) is a peculiar woman. Among other things, she calculates horoscopes with mathematical precision and has “Theories” she likes to test—one of them is that we inherit certain characteristics our ancestors were not born with, but they acquired over their lifetime:
I was working in my garden patch, testing one of my Theories. I think I can find proof for the fact that we inherit phenotypes, which flies in the face of modern genetics. I had noticed that certain acquired features make irregular appearances in subsequent generations. So three years ago I set about repeating Mendel’s experiment with sweet peas; I am now in the middle of it. I notched the petals of the flowers, through five generations in a row (two a year), and then checked to see if the seeds would produce flowers with damaged petals. I must say that the results of this experiment were looking very encouraging. (Ch. 11)
Some science could stand behind this: “Epigenetic changes don’t involve alterations of DNA sequences but can cause phenotypic changes” (Amare 2022).
Later on in the book, the narrator says,
In a semi-conscious state for days on end, I anxiously fantasized about my sweet peas, worrying that I should be tending the sixth generation, or else the results of my research would cease to be valid and once again we would assume that we don’t inherit our life experience, that all the sciences in the world are a waste of time, and that we’re incapable of learning anything from history. (Ch. 14)
The term “history” and the idea of inheriting “life experience” brought to my mind the memory of a very different book, a 2000 South African novel by Zakes Mda titled The Heart of Redness (not a reference to Conrad), in which the first male in every generation of a family inherits their ancestor’s scars:
On nights like this his scars become itchy. He rubs them a bit. He cannot reach them properly, because they cover his back. And the person who usually helps him is fast asleep. Why he has to be burdened with the scars of history, he does not understand. […]
Yes, Bhonco carries the scars that were inflicted on his great-grandfather, Twin-Twin, by men who flogged him after he had been identified as a wizard by Prophet Mlanjeni, the Man of the River. Every first boy-child in subsequent generations of Twin-Twin’s tree is born with the scars. Even those of the Middle Generations, their first males carried the scars. (Ch. 1)
Outside the world of fiction and the magical realism of The Heart of Redness, a similar concept, referred to as transgenerational or intergenerational trauma, has been the object of scientific studies for decades: “Our parental inheritance is much more than just genes. Every cell in the body is impregnated with consciousness that is laden with the thought forms and imprints passed down from generation to generation” (Coetzer). It’s been discussed in articles in the New York Times as well as Teen Vogue, in books, in scientific publications; often focusing on the traumatic aspect1. But literature, like Drive Your Plow, can also ask if perhaps, we don’t leave a trace of our better experiences, too, and of the things we learn in our lifetime—and scientists ask the same:
The story of permanence also privileges one experience over others, failing to acknowledge that learning and experiences accrue over a lifetime. While the search for molecular mechanisms through which trauma influences individuals and their offspring is important, so too is an appreciation of the complexity of human experience and growth, that cannot be reduced to our DNA, or even the epigenome.
If you know of any other books, fiction or nonfiction, that deal with similar themes, I would be interested in reading them—please let me know in the comments! x
Works cited
Novels
Mda, Zakes. The Heart of Redness. Picador, 2000.
Tokarczuk, Olga. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018.
Articles
Amare, Sara. Do You Carry the Trauma of Your Ancestors? Berkley Scientific Journal, 2022 https://bsj.berkeley.edu/do-you-carry-the-trauma-of-your-ancestors/
Coetzer, Wentzel. The impact of intergenerational trauma with reference to some biblical perspectives, https://web.archive.org/web/20090411163027/http://www.wentzelcoetzer.org/impactintergentrauma.htm
Yehuda, Rachel and Amy Lehrner, Linda M Bierer. “The public reception of putative epigenetic mechanisms in the transgenerational effects of trauma” in Environmental Epigenetics, Volume 4, Issue 2, April 2018, https://doi.org/10.1093/eep/dvy018
“The idea that there are epigenetic influences on offspring of trauma survivors has begun to permeate popular culture, suggesting something deeply compelling about this narrative. […] The message of these journalistic and popular culture references to epigenetics appears to be one of predetermined damage that cannot be negotiated. Epigenetic changes may equally reflect the effects of parental trauma to increase the offspring’s ability to adapt to their environments, a key to achieving resilience. […] Terms such as “inherited trauma” also obfuscate rather than clarify what is being transmitted and how—indeed, how can an experience be inherited? It is clearer to frame the discussion around how the impact of a trauma occurring to the parent can affect the offspring. Thus, the term “intergenerational trauma” is misleading because it is meant to refer to the intergenerational manifestation of the effects of parental trauma.” (Yehuda et al, 2018)