In her 1986 text The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, sci-fi author Ursula Le Guin offers an alternative understanding of narrative.

Writer Elizabeth Fisher had put forth the ‘Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution’ in Woman's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society (1979). Fisher posits that in the hunter-gatherer era, the first cultural device was not the hunter’s spear but the gatherer’s recipient object: a method of storing, gathering and keeping.

That this was a theory was a stark alternative to the mainstream understanding of early evolution, Le Guin argues, is precisely the point. Our historical narratives and, as such, the traditional narratives of fiction reflect the patriarchal reverence of the heroic mammoth hunter. Like many, Le Guin grows weary of the “killer” story.

“We've heard it, we've all heard all about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.”

If the traditional linear structure of heroic fiction is like the throwing of a spear (“starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark”), Le Guin argues for a new perspective: fiction as carrier bag, the container as hero.

“Narrative conceived of as carrier bag / belly / box / house / medicine bundle”

Within this conceptualisation, individual elements of the novel are not representative of the whole, “since [the narrative’s] purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process”. This novel might include some of the patriarchal cliches of the “killer” narrative. But here a story involving conquering is not a Story of Conquest, in the same way that a bag containing a coin is not a Bag of Coins. This is a capacious bag holding a churning mix of all kinds of stuff – these items have no hierarchy; they are all carried the same.

Art practice conceived of as carrier bag / belly / box / house / medicine bundle

I see Le Guin’s ideas as a useful way of framing art practice, and one that particularly resonates with my own work and approach to making.

In a physical sense, my works relate to the Le Guin’s Carrier Bag theory. The objects I make are part receptacle. This makes, I think, for non-monumental, non-heroic sculpture: traditionally, it should be the thing, not hold things. The works themselves – made of fabrics, stuffing, cardboard – also act a kind of carrier bag for their own component materials, until they are inevitably disassembled and reworked.

In a wider sense, the narrative of my art practice is non-linear. There is no grand climax – “neither resolution nor stasis” – but an ongoing process of collecting, gathering and iterating.

Fisher, E. (1979), ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution’, Woman's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 56-62.

Le Guin, U. (1986) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. 2nd ed. London: Cosmogenesis Publishing.