Michel Houellebecq: Humanity and its Aftermath by Douglas Morrey (review)

This is the second monograph in English to consider Michel Houellebecq’s work (John McCann’s Michel Houllebecq: Author of our Times (Bern: Peter Lang) appeared in 2010), and the first to offer a systematic analysis of the provocative social questions it raises. For Douglas Morrey, Houellebecq is most interesting because of his insight into the contemporary human condition: he allows us ‘to see ourselves in a new light, to diagnose our problems more clearly and to feel them more keenly’ (p. 153). Morrey’s approach is to consider Houellebecq’s fiction, with occasional reference to his poetry, through a rigid conceptual framework structured around the narrative perspectives he has located therein. In particular, Houellebecq ‘has a significant contribution to make to debates about the “post-human”’ (p. 8). In his writing this represents both a literary technique and a philosophical position. Indeed, Houellebecq’s narrating voices frequently present their societal analysis from a point beyond the extinction of humankind, which legitimizes his texts’ extensive sociological and historical contextualization. Morrey also argues that Houellebecq’s work interrogates traditional notions of humanity through a radical posthumanist position that ultimately considers ‘the extent to which human cultural evolution might be consciously guided or directed by humans themselves’ (p. 158). Such a perspective repeatedly undermines any notion of the uniqueness of humanity and suggests an attentive thinking through of the potential of science; this is most distinct in the way that Les Particules élémentaires and La Possibilté d’une île consider human cloning and genetic modification. Morrey’s analysis is original in that it argues that the major themes of Houellebecq’s œuvre, including sex, work, and leisure, can also be understood through the author’s posthuman frame. Particularly welcome too is Morrey’s attention to the broader range of critical challenges posited by Houellebecq’s work. For example, it is often difficult to pin down a consistent textual attitude with regard to the social questions Houellebecq’s writing holds up for critical consideration; Morrey attributes this to an issue of perspective and notes that ‘Houellebecq continues to waver between fully posthumanist and residually humanist understandings of the world’ (p. 149), often resulting in his narratives’ ambiguous tone of ‘impotent compassion’ for its protagonists (p. 45). In considering Houellebecq’s much-discussed writing style, Morrey concludes that, rather than the ‘blankness’ for which it has been critically derided, the ‘mixture of registers’ it displays accounts for its overall ‘troubling, unstable tone’ (p. 38). He also looks at how Houellebecq’s media persona, which has frequently obscured critical readings of his work, is brought to bear within his writing, particularly in the Prix Goncourt-winning La Carte et le territoire, which Morrey regards as both a ‘self-conscious reflection on the process of artistic creation and a hilariously mocking self-portrait’ (p. 7). Houellebecq is a critically divisive figure in the French literary landscape. Morrey’s study of some of the most provocative aspects of his work is conducted dispassionately and, as such, is not clouded by authorial provocation. As a result, this is an important and enlightening examination of the social dimension of Houellebecq’s novels.