L’immanence de la catastrophe lente à travers Soumission de Michel Houellebecq

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-8-2024

Abstract

In Apocalypses sans Royaume, Jean-Paul Engélibert draws attention to the "stories which convey the belief in an imminent end of the world in its immanence" (179). While the spectacular dimension of catastrophe as an event establishes a clear dividing line between a before and an after, "the slow and pervasive catastrophe," characteristic of the contemporary world, confronts us with a present in which "the actual end [is] already effective" (Engélibert, 179). Catastrophe as the destruction of a symbolic anteriority is thus considered not as a single event, but as a barely perceptible succession of deadly disturbances. Michel Houellebecq's Submission (2015) crystallizes this kind of catastrophist perception. Beyond a media hubbub which ignored the finesse of its treatment, the declinist thesis of this political dystopia unfolds in what Michel Maffesoli calls "the irrefutable signs in the sky of society" (17). In this article I attempt to demonstrate that the emergence of Islamism, as a societal and political project, is not considered as an apocalyptic upheaval. Rather, it is a judicious implementation of an "aesthetics of disappearance" (Virilio, 123). Be they daily, elementary, or dietary, the characters' habits keep evolving, creating a new symbolic order. The insidious and irreversible nature of those changes is barely felt in a world that already sees itself as "ruins of the future" (Jeudy, 111).

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Available online: https://epistemocritique.org/2-limmanence-de-la-catastrophe-lente-a-travers-soumission-de-michel-houellebecq/

Publication Title

Épistémocritique

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