The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (Terra Ignota): 1

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The generative potential of storytelling is especially pronounced in speculative fiction, a genre that mines our current reality as raw material for imaginary worldbuilding (this includes things like sci-fi, fantasy and horror). The genre’s patron saint, Ursula Le Guin, died last year aged 88, but she left behind her a breathtaking legacy of fiercely intelligent books and short stories imbued with her own anarcho-feminist, anticolonial politics. One of her best-known novels, The Dispossessed, imagines a small, separatist planet administered according to anarcho-syndicalist principles, what she subtitles an “ambiguous utopia” full of contradictions and complexity. On the planet Anarres, prison does not exist, work is voluntary, any claim to ownership is dismissed as “propertarian”— yet, despite all this, greed and power can still take hold. It feels like a book of thinking aloud, in which Le Guin is trying to figure out different realities through writing. It speaks to the kind of writer Le Guin was: generous and open minded, investigative and bursting with ideas, willing to be wrong, yet always reaching for a world free from harm. The only problem is that a carrier bag story isn’t, at first glance, very exciting. “It is hard to tell”, writes Le Guin, “a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats…” Braidotti, Rosi. 2011. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Gough, Noel. 2010. “Performing Imaginative Inquiry: Narrative Experiments and Rhizosemiotic Play.” In Imagination in Educational Theory and Practice: A Many-sided Vision, edited by Thomas William Nielsen, Rob Fitzgerald, and Mark Fettes, 42–60. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it." With a new introduction by Donna Haraway, the eminent cyberfeminist, author of the revolutionary A Cyborg Manifesto and most recently, Staying with the Trouble and Manifestly Haraway. Braidotti, Rosi. 2014. “Writing as a Nomadic Subject.” Comparative Critical Studies 11(2–3): 163–184. doi: 10.3366/ccs.2014.0122. Næss, Arne. 2005. “Creativity and Gestalt Thinking.” In The Selected Works of Arne Næss, edited by Harold Glasser and Alan R. Drengson. The Netherlands: Springer. This influential essay opens a portal to terra ignota: unknown lands where the possibilities of human experience and knowledge can be discovered anew.

Y lo que propone Le Guin es preguntarse por la historia de quien recolectaba las “semillas, raíces, brotes, tallos, hojas, nueces, vainas, frutos y granos, añadiendo insectos y moluscos junto a la captura de aves, peces, ratones, conejos y otros pequeños animales inofensivos para aumentar la cantidad de proteína (27)”, que constituían, dice, del sesenta y cinco al ochenta por ciento de lo que los seres humanos comían en ese periodo de la historia. Los verdaderos responsables de mantenerlos alimentados, bah! Y que más allá de consumirlos debían transportar los alimentos, y ahí entra en juego el recipiente, la bolsa. “Un libro guarda palabras. Las palabras guardan cosas. Portan significados. Una novela es un atado que mantiene las cosas en una relación particular y poderosa las unas con las otras y con nosotras (38)”. Simondon, Gilbert. 1995. L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique. Grenoble, France: Editions Jérôme Millon. Gough, Noel. 1998. “Reflections and Diffractions: Functions of Fiction in Curriculum Inquiry.” In Curriculum: Toward New Identities, edited by William F. Pinar, 93–127. New York, NY: Garland Publishing Inc. Haraway, Donna J. 1997. “enlightenment@science_wars.com: A Personal Reflection on Love and War.” Social Text 15(1): 123–129. doi: 10.2307/466820. The session was organised into three stages. In the first stage, the students were asked to choose one of their objects and tell the group the story of how it related to their doctoral research or journey. In stage two they choose another object and wrote and then shared 30 words about how it was significant to them, and in the final stage, they wrote 3 words encapsulating the relevance of the last object.Este libro habla de los relatos no contados. De otra forma de contar relatos. Y no puedo evitar traer a cuenta algo que me pasa en relación al tema. Considero que no soy buena contando anécdotas, cuando era chica escuchaba a mi hermana contar a nuestros padres algo que ambas habíamos vívido y me sorprendía viviendo una nueva historia. ¿Eso pasó?, me preguntaba dudando de mi memoria. De adulta me sigue pasando lo mismo y muchas veces paso la palabra para que otro cuente la anécdota compartida porque, de seguro, va a ser más emocionante que si la cuento yo. Quizás sea eso lo que despertó mi interés por las historias que se cuentan, por el tratar de analizarlas, encontrar el mecanismo detrás. Y de eso va este libro, de encontrar la base del mecanismo de contar historias y proponer uno alternativo. “(…) busco la naturaleza, el sujeto, las palabras del otro relato, la historia no contada, la historia de la vida (36)”.

In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin retells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination. Le Guin, Ursula K. 1989. Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press. Taguchi, Hillevi Lenz. 2012. “A Diffractive and Deleuzian Approach to Analysing Interview Data.” Feminist Theory 13(3): 265–281. doi: 10.1177/1464700112456001.The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn't any good if he isn't in it. The students who signed up were asked to find 3 objects which were somehow related to their research or to the experience of doing their doctorate, put them in a bag and bring them to the online pop-up session. These objects could be linked in practical ways (eg a coffee cup used every day), academically (a favourite book) or for more esoteric reasons related to reflections, memories, dreams, conversations or experiences that were meaningful to them even if tangential to the actual business of writing a doctorate. Haraway, Donna J. 2008a. “Otherworldly Conversations, Terran Topics, Local Terms.” In Material Feminisms, edited by Stacy Alaimo and Susan J. Hekman, 157–187. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Wagner, Jane. 1986. The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. 1st ed. New York, NY: Harper & Row.