Dystopia As Literary Declinism in the Novels of Michel Houellebecq
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Dystopia as literary declinism in the novels of Michel Houellebecq Sophie Patrick BA (Hons), MA (University of Auckland) This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities French Studies 2018 THESIS DECLARATION I, Sophie Patrick, certify that: This thesis has been substantially accomplished during enrolment in the degree. This thesis does not contain material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my name, in any university or other tertiary institution. No part of this work will, in the future, be used in a submission in my name, for any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution without the prior approval of The University of Western Australia and where applicable, any partner institution responsible for the joint-award of this degree. This thesis does not contain any material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. The work(s) are not in any way a violation or infringement of any copyright, trademark, patent, or other rights whatsoever of any person. This thesis contains only sole-authored work, some of which has been published and/or prepared for publication under sole authorship. Signature: Date: 5 July 2018 ii ABSTRACT This study explores how the dystopian genre is employed by French author, Michel Houellebecq, to convey declinist concerns through literature. Though existing scholarship links Houellebecq to both declinism and dystopia, this is the first study to examine the relationship between the two in his works. Drawing from various disciplines within the humanities, as well as literary analysis and close reading, I show how deeply declinist ideas inform Houellebecq’s fiction, the level of coherence which links a number of themes already addressed separately in the secondary literature, and that Houellebecq’s entire novelistic universe – not just his imagined futures – can be read as dystopian. Throughout this thesis, an interdisciplinary approach is used, mirroring the breadth and richness of the issues and ideas presented in the texts. After examining the socially critical and premonitory functions of dystopia, as well as the declinist impulse throughout French history (chapter 1), Houellebecq’s novels are analysed around three key dystopian themes. Chapter 2 addresses Houellebecq’s treatment of economy, drawing on the economic ideas of certain carefully-chosen thinkers and the hitherto “unliterary” concept of attention economy. Chapter 3’s analysis of the body in Houellebecq’s novels is framed by sociological thought, and in chapter 4, I employ Foucault’s theory of pastoral power in a reading of religion in the Houellebecquian universe. Together, these analyses show how declinism and dystopia are effectively married to produce a particularly bleak portrayal of Western society, allowing me to present a different approach to reading Houellebecq’s novels as dystopian. This is the concept of a dystopian present, in which the perceived flaws of Western civilisation as it is today are amplified, not in a temporally or spatially separate universe, but in a hyper-realistic portrayal of contemporary developed society. This thesis widens the scope for dystopian readings of other socially critical works and lays a foundation for future investigations of declinism in literature. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii AUTHORSHIP DELCARATION viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS OF PRIMARY SOURCES ix INTRODUCTION 1 From the Middle Ages to Contemporary France 1 Dystopian present and declinism 2 Houellebecq: the author 3 Declinism 4 Thesis Methodology 6 Economy 6 The Body 8 Religion 9 Conclusion of introduction 9 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 11 Declinism in the West 13 Declinism in France 16 Decadence 18 Decadence and fear of decline in France 18 Declinism in France pre-2008 20 Decline in France: 2008 economic crisis to present 22 Provocation 27 Scholarship on Houellebecq and declinism 29 Scholarship on Houellebecq and dystopia 31 Social criticism 31 Association with other genres 33 Utopia and dystopia 36 Dystopian present 38 Chapter conclusion 39 iv CHAPTER 2: ECONOMY 40 Economy in declinism 41 Economy in dystopia 42 Capitalism 43 The dystopia of consumer capitalism 48 Inevitability 55 The trivialisation of culture 56 John Keynes unobtainable leisure utopia: work, careers and production 58 The motivation to work 61 Production 69 Post-Marxist dystopia 73 Parallel economies 74 The Sexual Economy 75 Sexual economy and declinism 78 The Attention Economy 79 Information and attention 80 Attention shortage: a modern problem 85 Reciprocity 86 Reciprocity and Mauss 87 Deprivation, decline and dystopia 89 Chapter conclusion 92 CHAPTER 3: THE BODY 94 Dualism and dystopia 94 The body in sociology 96 Feminism 97 Capitalism and consumer culture 99 Control of the body 100 Diet and exercise 102 Grooming and clothing 107 Ageing 111 Valorisation of youth 113 v Middle Age: the beginning of old age 116 Culmination: Soumission 122 The boundaries of the body 125 The body as a biological phenomenon 126 Neutralising Shilling’s social factors 126 Chapter conclusion: Return to dualism 131 CHAPTER 4: RELIGION 133 Religion in utopia and dystopia 135 Religion in declinism 136 Religion and power 138 The decline of religion 139 The return of religion 144 Corrupted religion 144 Foucault and pastoral power 147 Pastoral power in Houellebecq’s religious dystopias 151 Detail and focus on the body 152 Focus on confession 154 Justification and salvation 157 Chapter conclusion 160 CONCLUSION 164 WORKS CITED 170 ANNEX 185 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I must thank my principal supervisor, Hélène Jaccomard, for her unwavering support, patience, and kindness; for helping me switch my specialisation from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century; and whose generosity with her knowledge, time and encouragement kept me going. She made this thesis possible. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor, Bonnie Thomas, for her valuable input and scrupulous attention to detail. A trip to the United States of America to participate in a conference on utopia in 2014 was funded by an I. and B. Jackson scholarship; I am most grateful to Irene Jackson for making this experience – my first academic conference – a reality. This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. Thanks must also go to the many people who helped me through the challenging years of my PhD candidacy, in particular: my colleagues Sabine Kuuse for her kindness, and Paul Gibbard for his humour; my fellow postgraduate and friend Thomas Barratt for the many hours we spent writing together, and for his advice and commiserations; and, of course, my family, especially my sister Sarah who has been through it all before. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude to my husband Chris who supported me without question and never stopped believing in me, and to my daughter Freyja, who, in her two short years, has given me more encouragement to do better than she will ever know. I dedicate this thesis to them both. vii AUTHORSHIP DECLARATION: SOLE AUTHOR PUBLICATIONS This thesis contains the following sole-authored work that has been published. Details of the work: Patrick, Sophie. “Attention Economy in the Novels of Michel Houellebecq.” Limina Journal, vol. 20, no. 2, 2014, www.limina.arts.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/2657376/Patrick- article.pdf. Location in thesis: Ideas from this article have been incorporated into Chapter 2. Details of the work: Patrick, Sophie. “Declinism, Nihilism and Conflict Avoidance in the Novels of Michel Houellebecq.” Essays in French Literature and Culture, 2016, vol. 53, pp. 99-104. Location in thesis: Ideas about declinism from this article have been incorporated and developed in the introduction and Chapter 1. Signature: Date: 5 July 2018 viii List of abbreviations of primary sources References to Houellebecq’s novels are given using the following abbreviations. EDL Extension Du Domaine de La Lutte CT La Carte et Le Territoire PI La Possibilité d’une Île PE Les Particules Élémentaires P Plateforme. Flammarion S Soumission. Flammarion ix Introduction From the Middle Ages to contemporary France I have always had a predilection for the other-worldly, for narratives which depict people and places different – yet connected – to my own reality. As a student of French, these preferences led to research in medieval literature, a field to which I remained loyal when completing my Honours and Masters dissertations. When the time came to think about a topic for a doctoral thesis, however, my loyalty wavered. I had another literary penchant which I hoped to break into as a researcher, a field which also satisfied my preference for other-worldliness. Thus began the search for a PhD topic with a single aim: to write a thesis on a contemporary French dystopian work. This search proved more difficult than anticipated. France has a long history of contributing to the utopian tradition, from which dystopia derives.1 However, recent contributions by French authors to literary dystopian fiction are relatively few. There was one standout, however: the novels of that star author of contemporary French fiction – Michel Houellebecq. Three of his novels contained troubling imagined futures, the dystopias for which I’d been searching. 2 Furthermore, I was struck by how these futures were related to a negative, grey depiction of contemporary life, not only in France but the West in general. This criticism of developed capitalist society evoked a nostalgic and pessimistic sentiment which appeared to be increasingly common in French political, social and economic commentary, a mouvance labelled declinism. Declinism, as I will presently show in further detail, is the most recent form of the fear of decline of a society or civilisation. I believed I could show that Houellebecq’s novels were a literary contribution to this mouvance, and indeed discovered that certain scholars had already made this connection.