Our Future is African: The Carrier Bag Theory of Civilization

Portable pouches and carrying bags have ancient roots in Africa, evolving from prehistoric hunter-gatherer tools to deeply symbolic cultural and spiritual items. They are evidence of Elizabeth Fisher’s Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution.

Medicine man's bag, Congo, West Africa, 1871-1910

In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, sci-fi fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin draws on Elizabeth Fisher’s Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution, set out in her 1979 book Women’s Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society. In this work, Fisher reframes evolution, arguing that the earliest human tool was not a weapon or a hunting spear but a container for gathering and transporting foraged plant foods.

By shifting the focus from the hunting spear and killing to the gathering vessel—the container/carrier bag- Fisher turns the traditional narrative of human history as a series of violent conflicts on its head. The heroic historical narratives in which we learn that “hunting dominated the attention of prehistoric man” are read in a way that repositions the first technology not as the spear but as the carrier bag.

Le Guin points out that “the story made the difference.”  The choice of story we tell always makes a difference. To see our human evolution through the carrier bag, container or pouch theory offers a completely different account of human history than telling it through the master narrative of weapons, conflict, conquest and role of the Hero.

How we tell a story determines how the world is temporarily constructed and viewed. And this has real-life consequences for ordinary people.

I invite us to draw on Le Guin’s short essay, "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction", to critically rethink the stories we were told about Africa. And to rethink the role Africa plays in what Le Guin calls “the Story of the Ascent of Man, the Hero.” The central protagonist - the conqueror, the imperialist, the explorer, the adventurer - uses Africa to ascend and advance history. In this dynamic, the continent and its people are denied their own agency and history. Instead, they are utilized to forge the myth of the Western hero.

The Story of the Ascent of Man is the story of the ‘Hero’, the archetypal figure of domination, noting that “the central concern of narrative … is conflict” (34): a battle to be won or lost. Man the Hero.

In this narrative, Man the Hero is not African. Rather, Africa is the setting for the Hero, the conqueror who uses long, hard objects to stick, bash and kill. The continent is reduced to a passive backdrop designed to test the resolve of (usually) male protagonists.

Man, the Hero, tells Africa it is underdeveloped. And “… the linear, progressive, Times’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic” institutions measures progress, development, good governance, levels of corruption and finds Africa(ns) wanting.

All the while, Man, heroically continues to poke, extract, and kill.

We have been told a single story of Africa. And we are still being told that story of dystopia, conflict, disharmony, lack of modernity, no history, etcetera, because the story serves the protagonist, Man, the Hero. The dystopia reveals the action needed, the battle at hand, how to help Africa see sense, become developed, rule justly, or whatever else is called in as a reason for intervention. Man, the Hero, is trying to sort Africa out.

But.

Le Guin reminds us of the other story, the one she is inspired by in Fisher’s Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution.  I see this other story of evolution and civilization, as an inherently African tale. Le Guin writes:

Prior to the preeminence of sticks, swords and the Hero’s killing tools, our ancestors’ greatest invention was the container: the basket of wild oats, the medicine bundle, the net made of your own hair, the home, the shrine, the place that contains whatever is sacred. The recipient, the holder, the story. The bag of stars.

Le Guin expands upon ‘feminine technology’ to include ‘story’ as a transformational carrier bag of culture. A novel does not need a Hero, heading in an aggressive path toward a violent climax or victory. A story can serve as a container that holds diverse, messy, and interconnected experiences. African complexity and diversity, and myriad beauties and cultures.

A carrier bag theory of fiction and of civilization recognizes that African ancestors survived and built communities through the invention of the container. This enabled them to carry food home, share resources, and safely transport infants over long distances. African societies and communities continue to hold and nurture these deep civilizations, despite the linear, progressive, Times’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic Hero, who wants Africa to remain the backdrop to their story. So that these Men Heroes can continue to act upon Africa.

Le Guin and Fisher offer one small path, among others, to understanding this vast, complex and ancient continent known as ‘Africa’, beyond the pathetic and insipid single story that we are fed in our media, in our politicians’ words, through our policymakers’ strategies and so on and so forth.

Stories are carrier bags.

And we need to lean into these other stories of evolution and civilization to better understand the youth and cultures of our common future.  The old stories of the conquering hero, with the sophisticated economic templates brought in to discipline Africa(ns), are simply wholly inadequate for our times and the tasks ahead.