The Plastic Bag Theory of Fiction: Narrative Plasticity and the “Mentality” of the Anthropocene

• DOI: 10.3138/utq.94.02.02
• Publication Date: 2025-05-22T15:19:58Z
• Authors: Jennifer A. Wagne...
• Keywords: Anthropocene

This article traces the relation of plasticity, ontology, and responsibility in Anthropocene novels by Ursula K. Le Guin, J.G. Ballard, William Gibson, Ruth Ozeki. Reimagining Guin’s “The Carrier Bag Theory Fiction” as Plastic reveals fiction’s “plastic” resources – its play with form language, troping space temporality, metafictional reflections on narrative itself to illuminate problematize an ontological contradiction adhering term “Anthropocene.” Philosopher Catherine Malabou argues that conflating human-and/as-geological history creates rift, a “self-alienation” allowing for “slumber itself.” Narrative figurations are rife fiction: “narrative plasticity markers” register accumulative ambitions global capitalism “the garbage heap History,” while reflecting back (self-)alienated subject “anthropocenic history” through hauntings long-forgotten memories, ghosts shape-shifters, alternate or hidden histories.