BUCHWEITZ, Nurit, An Officer of Civilization. The Poetics of Michel Houellebecq, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2015, 184 p.
Présentation
Michel Houellebecq posits himself as an officer of civilization, offering a map of contemporary reality and according literature a substantial role in the field of public involvement. His unique stype problematizes contemporary cultural processes and deconstructs the aesthetic and ideological thought-habits that design the collective imaginary of our era. As such, this book seeks to analyze the particularities of Houellebecq's poetics in the context of literary tradition, intertextual relations, psycho-cultural aspects and social semiotics, alongside contacts with the contemporary field of art. The author focuses on Houellebecq's poetical differentia specifica, the unique and innovative intersection between the cooperation with transnation capitalism and the resentment toward ignorant indulgence in it. This book reads Houellebecq as both iconoclastic and subversive and at the same time as a commodity in the literary marketplace and shows how his narrative are harnessed for the purpose of activism in the service of engaged impact.
Table of Contents
The Map, the Territory and the Poetics: Introduction
Passive-Activism: A Modular Narration
Familiarity, Kinship, and the Autobiographical Topos
Visions of the Future, Persistence of the Real: A Quest
Art, Literature, and the Market: The Viewer/Reader as Voyeur
The Cult of Happiness: A Gnostic Theology
Pornography and the Post-human