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

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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. 2011. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Le Guin, Ursula K. 1989. Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. 1st ed. New York, NY: Grove Press. 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.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2014. “Writing as a Nomadic Subject.” Comparative Critical Studies 11(2–3): 163–184. doi: 10.3366/ccs.2014.0122. 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.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. Wagner, Jane. 2012. The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers Inc. Original edition, Original screenplay published in 1986.

Canby, Vincent. 1991. “Lily Tomlin, Translated From Stage To Screen.” The New York Times, September 27. http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9401EFD7123AF934A1575AC0A967958260. yeah sure i'll put this on my goodreads. why not. anything to encourage people to read it; it's like five minutes long and it's a very thoughtful examination of narrative, specifically the way narrative is shaped by a patriarchal drive toward conflict, violence, and war as the centerpoints of human existence. 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)Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures). Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books. I am an academic and a writer of fiction and the more I write in both forms the more I realise the similarities between the two. I firmly believe that writing a thesis in the humanities or social sciences is an enormously creative act and that a thesis is, at heart, a story. After all, no two people would ever write a thesis in the same way even if they read all the same books, had exactly the same data, used the same theoretical framework and had the same supervisors.