Wagner, Jane. 1986. The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. 1st ed. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

The introduction of a singular hero, however, replicates a very specific and historical power relation. The pioneers and the saviors: likely male, likely white, almost certainly brimming with unearned confidence. The veneration of the hero reduces others into victims: those who must be rescued. “The prototypical savior is a person who has been raised in privilege and taught implicitly or explicitly (or both) that they possess the answers and skills needed to rescue others,” writes Jordan Flaherty in his book No More Heroes. To be a hero is fundamentally privileged, and any act of heroism reinforces that privilege.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.

The conversations stimulated by these objects and activities were fascinating, informative and insightful, although private to the group who participated so I will not share them here. 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. Braidotti, Rosi. 2011. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Le Guin’s carrier bag is, in addition to a story about early humans, a method for storytelling itself, meaning it’s also a method of history. But unlike the spear (which follows a linear trajectory towards its target), and unlike the kind of linear way we’ve come to think of time and history in the West, the carrier bag is a big jumbled mess of stuff. One thing is entangled with another, and with another. Le Guin once described temporality in her Hainish Universe (a confederacy of human planets that feature in a number of her books) in the most delightfully psychedelic terms: “Any timeline for the books of Hainish descent would resemble the web of a spider on LSD.” 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.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)”.

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." 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. It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what concepts we think to think other concepts with. ’ (Haraway 2019:10) Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon. 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.We will not “beat” climate change, nor is “nature” our adversary. If the planet could be considered a container for all life, in which everything — plants, animals, humans — are all held together, then to attempt domination becomes a self-defeating act. By letting ourselves “become part of the killer story,” writes Le Guin, “we may get finished along with it.” All of which is to say: we have to abandon the old story.

Bailey, John. 1991. The Search for Signs of Inteligent Life in the Universe. Los Angeles, CA: Orion Classics. Haraway, Donna J. 2014. “ SF: String Figures, Multispecies Muddles, Staying with the Trouble.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1uTVnhIHS8. 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.Berman, Morris. 2000. Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Desde las cavernas venimos contando el relato del Héroe, de ese cazador de mamuts y de todas las emocionantes historias que traía para compartir en cada regreso. “Antes de que te des cuenta, los hombres y las mujeres en el campo de avena salvaje y sus hijos e hijas y las habilidades de quienes construyen y los pensamientos de quienes piensan y las canciones de quienes cantan forman parte de aquel relato, fueron puestos al servicio del cuento del Héroe. Pero este no es su relato. Es el de él” (29). Y pienso, de qué forma la civilización, cultura, sociedad que armamos gira en torno a este héroe y sus hazañas, y con ello a su capacidad por encima del resto. Harta de las idolatrías.