“Wanting to be human too, I sought for evidence that I was; but if that’s what it took, to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all.
That’s right, they said. What you are is a woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective. Now be quiet while we go on telling the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero.
Go on, say I, wandering off towards the wild oats, with Oo Oo in the sling and little Oom carrying the basket. You just go on telling how the mammoth fell on Boob and how Cain fell on Abel and how the bomb fell on Nagasaki and how the burning jelly fell on the villagers and how the missiles will fall on the Evil Empire, and all the other steps in the Ascent of Man.
[…]
It is the story that makes the difference. It is the story that hid my humanity from me, the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero. The wonderful, poisonous story of Botulism. The killer story.
It sometimes seems that the story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, think we’d better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one’s finished. Maybe.
The trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.”
Niet de speer van de jager maar de tas van de verzamelaar hoort bij de eerste technologie van de mens. En dus ook niet het lineaire verhaal over de Held (dat we consumeren) maar de emergente vertelling in gemeenschappen (die we samen produceren en meenemen en zo verspreiden) past bij waar we nu voor staan: het levensverhaal weer aan de praat krijgen. Want doorgaan met de moordverhalen? “Tja, dat kan niet.”
Afijn, aan de carrier bag theory of fiction moest ik dus denken toen ik deze tas zag in Museum Vlaardingen bij de expositie Tussenruimte.
De 4 pagina’s hilarische trefzekerheid van Ursula LeGuin kun je hier downloaden.