TY - JOUR

T1 - The (un)manageable self in Michel Houellebecq's soumission

AU - Cnossen, Boukje

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - On the day he defends his doctoral thesis on the work of the French 19th century novelist Joris-Karl Huymans, François comes to the conclusion that the best part of his life is now over. This is how Soumission, the last novel by Michel Houellebecq (2015b), starts off. Such a beginning makes one recognise the work as quintessentially Houellebecqian: where others may feel joy or even a sense of pride when hitting milestones, his protagonists, always anti-heroes, experience a sense of loss, knowing that from here, all is downhill. However, apart from drawing us right into his depressingly realist universe (Jefferey, 2011), this remark also forms a straight arrow to core Soumission's subject matter. Not the science fiction of France's conversion to islam, but the near collapse of our current socio-economic regime is the issue. In response to the remark that recent political events make it difficult to appreciate Soumission for the satirical fiction that it is (Lilla, 2015), the exercise here is to detach the book from its association to the unfortunate events with which its appearance coincided, as well as the current rise of islamophobia in various parts of the western world, and treat it as a piece of fiction that speaks about social relations, about living together, and about the role of the market and consumption in it, which is very much the focus of all of Michel Houellebecq'snovels. In this essay, I will try to show how Soumission may be read as a commentary on contemporary consumerist societies. To do so, I will reveal the tactics Houellebecq employs in his prose in order to challenge the idea that anything is a worthwhile endeavour in its own. I will argue these tactics revolve around a meticulous entanglement of the following ingredients: sexual relations, pre-fabricated food, and professional status. I will show how these elements intertwine to prove Houellebecq's point: that all we think worth living for is essentially subject to market forces, and that the best we can do is surrender and give up on desire entirely

AB - On the day he defends his doctoral thesis on the work of the French 19th century novelist Joris-Karl Huymans, François comes to the conclusion that the best part of his life is now over. This is how Soumission, the last novel by Michel Houellebecq (2015b), starts off. Such a beginning makes one recognise the work as quintessentially Houellebecqian: where others may feel joy or even a sense of pride when hitting milestones, his protagonists, always anti-heroes, experience a sense of loss, knowing that from here, all is downhill. However, apart from drawing us right into his depressingly realist universe (Jefferey, 2011), this remark also forms a straight arrow to core Soumission's subject matter. Not the science fiction of France's conversion to islam, but the near collapse of our current socio-economic regime is the issue. In response to the remark that recent political events make it difficult to appreciate Soumission for the satirical fiction that it is (Lilla, 2015), the exercise here is to detach the book from its association to the unfortunate events with which its appearance coincided, as well as the current rise of islamophobia in various parts of the western world, and treat it as a piece of fiction that speaks about social relations, about living together, and about the role of the market and consumption in it, which is very much the focus of all of Michel Houellebecq'snovels. In this essay, I will try to show how Soumission may be read as a commentary on contemporary consumerist societies. To do so, I will reveal the tactics Houellebecq employs in his prose in order to challenge the idea that anything is a worthwhile endeavour in its own. I will argue these tactics revolve around a meticulous entanglement of the following ingredients: sexual relations, pre-fabricated food, and professional status. I will show how these elements intertwine to prove Houellebecq's point: that all we think worth living for is essentially subject to market forces, and that the best we can do is surrender and give up on desire entirely

KW - Management studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85030632252&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85030632252

VL - 20

SP - 313

EP - 321

JO - Management (France)

JF - Management (France)

SN - 1286-4892

IS - 3

ER -