Sensing the

World
New Media Writing

Carrier Bag
Theory of fiction
Ursula K. le guin
 The Vuvalini, the Many
Mothers, and their
longing for shows,
for stories.
“Shows. Everyone in the
old world had a show.”

These shows are

thought as linkages
to others that might
still be out there.
“Do you think there’s still
somebody out there?
Sending shows?

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015

Le guin

Not just the bottle of gin or wine, but the bottle in its older
sense of container in general, a thing that holds
something else. (150)
 Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe,
that the Ape Man first bashed somebody with in the movie and
then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper
Le guin

murder, flung up into the sky, and whirling there it became a

space ship thrusting its way into the cosmos to fertilize it
and produce at the end of the movie a lovely fetus, a boy of
course, drifting in the Milky Way without (oddly enough) any
womb, any matrix at all? I don’t know. I don’t even care. I’m
not telling that story. (150-51)
 The linkage, the chain,
between discovery/
invention, violence,
exploration and the
human here is rather
striking.

This linkage is not

without merit, but it is
certainly in need of a
complication.

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
 [B]ut how do you get more than one stomachful and one
handful home? [...] A holder. A recipient.
Le guin

The first cultural device was probably a recipient...Many theorizers feel

that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to
hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.

So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women’s Creation. But no, this

cannot be. (150)
The team found psychoactive compounds in an
animal-skin pouch constructed of three fox snouts
stitched together, Jose Capriles, Penn State, 2019.
Le guin

[L]ong before the useful knife and ax; right along with the
indispensable whacker, grinder, and digger—[...]—with or
before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool
that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. (151)
Le guin

So long as culture was explained as originating from and

elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking,
bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had, or wanted,
any particular share in it. (151)
 So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the
Le guin

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 the narrative, including the novel, is
conflict; and third, the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it. (153-54)
Russell Brandom maps an action sequence in Skyfall for The Verge.
 I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural,
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proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a

bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear
meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a
particular, powerful relation to one another and to us. (153)
Russell Brandom maps an action sequence in Mad Max for The Verge.
Le guin

It is a strange realism, but it is a strange reality. (154)

 Just prior to this, The
Dag, one of Immortan
J o e ’s w i v e s , w a s
asking The Keeper of
the Seeds about the
latter’s proficiency with
a rifle.

This scene is thus in

p o i n t e d
contradistinction to the
gun scene.

In an earlier scene,
bullets are referred to
as “anti-seeds”: “plant
one and watch the
thing die.”

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015

Le guin

Still there are seeds to be gathered, and

room in the bag of stars (154).
 Sensing the
World
New Media Writing

Carrier Bag
Theory of Research reports
 The look and feel of
Unknown Fields’ projects
and productions resonates
with Le Guin, and they
point toward what a
“Carrier Bag Theory of
Reports” might be.
“Here we are both
visionaries and reporters,
part documentarians and
part science fiction
soothsayers as the
otherworldly sites we
encounter afford us a
distanced viewpoint from
which to survey the
consequences of emerging
environmental and
technological scenarios."

Unknown Fields, Division Showreel, 2013

Images from Unknown Fields’ Tales from the Dark Side of the City, Perimeter, 2016.
Website Templates from Cargo, 2020.
 Sensing the
World
New Media Writing

Carrier Bag
Theory of fiction
Ursula K. le guin