An Officer of Civilization

by Nurit Buchweitz

  [«Certains êtres éprouvent très tôt une effrayante impossibilité à vivre par eux-mêmes; au fond ils ne supportent pas de voir leur propre vie en face, et de la voir en entier, sans zones d’ombre, sans arrière-plans. Leur existence est j’en conviens une exception aux lois de la nature, non seulement parce que cette fracture d’inadaptation fondamentale se produit en dehors de toute finalité génétique mais aus sien raison de l’excessive lucidité qu’elle présuppose, lucidité évidemment transcendante aux schémas perceptifs de l’existence ordinaire. Il suffit parfois de placer un autre être en face d’eux, à condition de le supposer aussi pur, aussi transparent qu’eux-mêmes, pour que cette insoutenable fracture se résolve en une aspiration lumineuse, tendue et permanente vers l’absolument inaccessible. Ainsi, alors qu’un miroir ne renvoie jour après jour que la même désespérante image, deux miroirs parallèles élaborent et construisent un réseau net et dense qui entraîne l’œil humain dans une trajectoire infinie, sans limites, infinie dans sa pureté géométrale, au-delà des souffrances et du monde.» (Extension, pp. 146–147)]

  Strikingly absent from this description are the pleasures of communal kinship, the delights of marriage and certainly the joys of parenthood.10 Prospective relationships are expected to relieve individual emotional pain and ontological bewilderment; they may establish affinity between partners, but are not likely to result in kinship.11 In a perfunctory manner, the narrator ← 48 | 49 → reveals the nature of relating to a companion: not as a distinct other, with recognized alterity and commitment to their otherness, but as an entity that caters to certain needs and, as such, may be treated as an instrument.

  Are Houellebecq’s characters able to sustain long-term relationships? In all of his novels, there are only three instances of heroes genuinely and declaratively in love: Michel and Valérie in Platform, Christian and Bruno in The Elementary Particles, and Daniel1 and Esther in The Possibility of an Island. These relationships unveil the full scope of the inherent contradiction between the vociferous yearning for a substantial love and the inability to sustain long-term relations. In the other novels, relationships are practically lacking by virtue of abstention, as a result of grave disappointment, as is the case in Whatever; indifference stemming from frustration, as in Lanzarote; or a rational decision to lead the life of an unfeeling recluse (Michel in The Elementary Particles). Most relationships in Houellebecq’s works are opaque, eclipsed by self-doubt and emotional insecurity, and hence constantly on the verge of becoming a disappointment.12 The relationship between Michel and Valérie in Platform may be lucid, but it too is eventually short-lived and thus probably saved from the disappointment that is the fate of all other relationships in Houellebecq’s writing (as will be explained below).

  This chapter will focus on the nature of the family unit and familial ties in Houellebecq’s works, in addition to couplehood and parenthood. As we shall see, Houellebecq’s depiction of relationships between parents and children is equally perplexing in its abandonment of moral and physical responsibility and accountability. This conceptual outset was elucidated by the author himself, in an interview given in 2010:

  What I think, fundamentally, is that you can’t do anything about major societal changes. It may be regrettable that the family unit is disappearing. You could argue that it increases human suffering. But regrettable or not, there’s nothing we can do. That’s the difference between me and a reactionary. I don’t have any interest in turning back the clock because I don’t believe it can be done. You can only observe and describe […] but that’s what I do: I show the disasters produced by the liberalization of values.13 ← 49 | 50 →

  Indeed, Houellebecq’s novelistic narratives reiterate the connection between individual behavior and the collective liberalization of values. Common and typical of Houellebecq’s style are statements such as “his hedonistic worldview and the forces that shaped his consciousness and desires were common to an entire generation” (Particles, p. 148) [«sa vision hédoniste de la vie, les champs de force qui structuraient sa conscience et ses désirs appartenaient à l’ensemble de sa génération» (Particules, p. 178)], or “In the midst of the suicide of the West, it was clear they had no chance” (Particles, p. 196) [«Au milieu du suicide occidental, il était clair qu’ils n’avaient aucune chance.» (Particules, p. 237)].

  In telling the collective story of an entire generation, Houellebecq adopts the perspective of an historian who understands the protagonist’s tale as an illustration of how an individual, the child of parents raised in the Age of Aquarius, is defined by his connection with the historical situation into which he was born. The writer’s approach is documentary and historiographic, seeking to associate his characters’ behavior with specific formative events and their current implications. Yet alongside the historical depiction runs a parallel story, one which focuses on the individual; while the ethical and cognitive potential of the collective story is preserved and reproduced on the microcosmic scale, the personal tale adopts a biographical approach. Yet even with its overall historical associations, Houellebecq’s account is no less a recurring tale of familial neglect, injecting into the narrative a sense of immediacy and urgency that the collective story can never possess. Houellebecq’s characters are a second generation of dysfunctional families; as adults they inflict upon their spouses and offspring the very same pain they suffered as children. In depicting the biographical sources of the process of familial disintegration, in addition to moral and ethical nihilism and excessive liberation, Houellebecq maintains a hybrid construct of the personal and the collective which fluctuates between involvement and detachment.

  The Autobiographical Topos

  Most of Houellebecq’s novels are structured around a representation of the autobiographical topos. Characteristic of this topos is an event of ← 50 | 51 → constitutive, paradigmatic status, with clearly defined boundaries in space and time, which expresses the subject’s desires and obsessive thoughts.14 This inaugural event serves as a source of the multiple statuses, themes, and patterns which emerge from it through conversions, substitutions, oppositions, and dissolutions. The autobiographical topos may portray an event of primordial meaning from childhood, permeated with emotional residue and associated with diverse structural units and narrative patterns. The topos does not necessarily require a visual description through a picture or scene. Every autobiographical topos is a mode, a conceptual outline that draws its theoretical justification from the structure of the work. In Houellebecq’s writing, the primordial event is always desertion by mother and father. Although, as is commonly known, the author’s mother abandoned him as a young child (Houellebecq’s mother in fact felt the need to defend her actions by publishing her own autobiography), the device of the autobiographical topos does not only serve to exorcise personal demons; this is not the deciding factor here. This topos need not be read as direct autobiographical material;15 rather it is designed to shift the narrative from passive implications, as a remote, clinical, and expositional account of current affairs, to active ramifications, building on the private misery that is the consequence of a shattered family life. The inclusion of the autobiographical topos can be ascribed to the culture of therapy, in which “the cultural imaginary of psychology has become our contemporary ‘magma’”,16 permeating all societal discourses. Moreover, even though Houellebecq’s protagonists often express disdain toward psychology, this is nevertheless one of the novels’ main tools in relating to the past, for example when formational experiences are recalled as part of psychological treatment, as in the previously cited example from Whatever. The narrative of The Elementary Particles is periodically cut short by flashbacks to significant events in the past life of each of the brothers; in this way earlier scenes imbued with ← 51 | 52 → strong emotions are combined with the present as personal recollections. This integration of past and present unfolds the connection between the current situation and inaugural events and in this manner childhood incidents are interwoven into
the course of adult life.

  The following examples illustrate Houellebecq’s topos of abandonment by parents. In Platform the protagonist’s father is murdered at the outset of the work; while alive his relationship with his son had been remote and inattentive. In The Elementary Particles children are abandoned by both their parents and become completely estranged from them. In The Map and the Territory, the protagonist’s mother commits suicide when her son is still an infant; father and son have a distant relationship. Lanzarote includes no mention of the narrator’s family but does refer to parents who are members of the Raëlian cult and as such publically declare that “we have given pleasure to our children. From the earliest childhood we have taught them to experience pleasure and to give pleasure to others.” (Lanzarote, p. 77) [«Nous avons donné du plaisir à nos enfants. Nous leur avons appris dès le plus jeune âge à éprouver du plaisir; et à donner du plaisir aux autres.» (Lanzarote, p. 81)]. In a brief overview of his childhood, the narrator of Whatever recalls himself as “a child of seven […]. Since the divorce he no longer has a father. Only rarely does he see his mother, who occupies an important post in a cosmetics firm.” (Whatever, p. 11) [«un enfant de sept ans […]. Depuis le divorce, il n’a plus de père. Il voit assez peu sa mère, qui occupe un poste important dans une firme de cosmétiques.» (Extension, p. 13)]. In all these novels, parents are at best negligible, more often than not harmful. All characters, irrespective of age, including the narrators, have suffered the consequences of the apotheosis of individualism, either as self-realization, personal pleasure, and individual rights or as depression and alienation; both alternatives herald the decline of commitment to the other, the termination of family ties and the loss of the values of mutual responsibility.

  The presence of this recurring autobiographical topos suggests that human particles are motivated not merely by the contemporary cultural environment and the social forces of preceding generations, but that personal, familial residue is no less a major influence on life. The recurrent event is a strategy that brings about emotional intensification and immediacy, an a-priori pattern which may overshadow the ethical and historical context. The topos is transferred intact from novel to novel (with slight variations), yet the entirety of Houellebecq’s works presents a convincingly ← 52 | 53 → unified diegetic source for negotiations between the personal and the collective on the backdrop of the values that originated in the sixties: sexual revolution and galloping individualism. However, betrayal by parents is brought to the fore; even though the personal is connected to the historic and this betrayal is committed by an entire generation, the impact of parental behavior has far deeper consequences. Thus the lonely, self-loathing, and desperate male figures, carrying out acts of self-humiliation or abstinence, are a direct result of their kin’s fatal conduct. The deserting mother, or even the suicidal one, who fatally damages her child is not necessarily the outcome of the intellectual climate of the sixties. As such, these are narratives of the self; they are designed to fit chaotic life experiences into a conventional frame that enables identification. For Bruno Viard, the source of the decomposition and breakdown of the family unit – «une famille oùl’on s’aime» [“a family in which each one loves each other”]17 – is to be found in the collapse of the concept of the gift. Citing Houellebecq’s words in Platform, claiming that Westerners have “completely lost the sense of giving” (p. 174) [«Ils ont complètement perdu le sens du don» (Plateforme, p. 236)], and following Marcel Mauss, Viard demonstrates how the perpetual movement of the gift – giving, receiving, and giving again – is reciprocal, creating and sustaining friendship, kinship, and love (indeed, the alternative to the gift is competition).18 Houellebecq’s heroes were never offered any gifts, not even the most basic and primary gift of maternal love; as a result they are unable to give. The crisis of the gift produces a crisis of human bonding.

  The following example suggests that the autobiographical event is noteworthy and salient in its affiliation of marital and parental bonds, and concludes with the determination to withdraw altogether from familial ties:

  In April, for Anne’s birthday, I’d bought her a silver lamé bodice and garters. She was a little wary at first, but I persuaded her to try it on. While she was strapping herself ← 53 | 54 → into it, I finished the champagne. Then I heard her small trembling voice saying nervously: ‘I’m ready…’. The minute I walked into the bedroom I knew it had been a lousy idea. Her sagging ass was squeezed into the garters and her tits had never really recovered from breast-feeding. She needed liposuction, silicone implants, the works – though she would never have agreed to it. I closed my eyes and slipped a finger into her G-string; I was completely soft. At that moment Victor started howling from the next room – loud, shrill, unendurable screams. She put on a dressing gown and ran into his room […]. I had no intention of having another child. (Particles, p. 151)

  [«Pour l’anniversaire d’Anne, en avril, je lui ai acheté une guêpière lamée argent. Elle a un peu protesté, puis elle a accepté de la mettre. Pendant qu’elle tentait d’agrafer l’ustensile, j’ai fini le reste de Champagne. Puis j’ai entendu sa voix, faible et un peu chevrotante: ‘Je suis prête…’ En rentrant dans la chambre, je me suis tout de suite rendu compte que c’était foutu. Ses fesses pendaient, comprimées par les jarretelles; ses seins n’avaient pas résisté à l’allaitement. Il aurait fallu une liposuccion, des injections de silicone, tout un chantier… elle n’aurait jamais accepté. J’ai passé un doigt dans son string en fermant les yeux, j’étais complètement mou. A ce moment, dans la pièce voisine, Victor s’est mis à hurler de rage – des hurlements longs, stridents, insoutenables. Elle s’est enveloppée d’un peignoir de bain et s’est précipitée vers la chambre […]. Je n’avais pas l’intention d’avoir d’autres enfants.» (Particules, p. 181)]

  Acting as director and staging the scene, Bruno accords his wife the role of seductress and provides her with the necessary wardrobe and accessories. Anne is orchestrated to occupy the traditional exhibitionist position of being simultaneously displayed and looked-at:19 the man gazes and the woman is the passive object of his passion. Yet the depiction emphasizes Anne’s matronly features, especially as a child-rearer, even a dependable one, based on her reaction to the crying of their son. Her appearance, far from possessing hyper-real dimensions,20 generates his reaction, rendering her unqualified as a sexual partner. Facing his wife, Bruno experiences a moment of abjection when he is unable to realize his manhood.

  This scene is anticipated by episodes from Bruno’s past, in which Bruno the child and later the teenager gazes at his mother (Janine) during their encounters. He is allowed to view her, and her young partners, all handsome and virile by virtue of the fact that they are constantly replaced ← 54 | 55 → by younger versions. Their desire for Janine maintains her youth in Bruno’s eyes, as is surmised by the recurring references to her attractiveness. Since his parents are absent from his life, all that remains for Bruno is to observe them: no deeper relationship is either available or possible. Bruno witnessed scenes such as the one described in the following passage on the few occasions that he met his mother as a child:

  He saw little of his mother. He twice had spent his holidays in the villa in Cassis where she now lived. She regularly entertained hitchhikers and sundry young men passing through […] they would swim naked in the creeks […] sometimes his mother would take one of the boys to her bed. She was forty-five years old and her vulva was scrawny and sagged slightly, but she was still a very beautiful woman. (Particles, p. 51)

  [«Il voyait très peu sa mère. Deux fois, il était parti en vacances dans la villa qu’elle occupait à Cassis. Elle recevait beaucoup de jeunes qui passaient, qui faisaient la route […]. Ils se baignaient nus dans les calanques […]. Parfois, sa mère recevait un des garçons dans son lit. Elle avait déjà quarante-cinq ans; sa vulve était amaigrie, un peu pendante, mais ses traits restaient magnifiques.» (Particules, pp. 59–60)]

  The young, supp
le bodies have crystallized into a positive body image with which his wife’s matronly looks cannot contend. Bruno sees only the reflection of these traits, especially concerning looks and sexuality, as is emphasized by the narrative in each depiction of his meetings with his mother. Thus it comes as no surprise when we see Bruno in later life gazing at his wife with contempt, unable to appreciate her external appearance, or the evident nuisance of his baby son crying in the background further shatters his phantasm of youth. By gazing at the two women from the same angle, the text creates a contrastive analogy. One set is devised by the woman (the mother), the other by the man (now husband); one woman has a high value in the realm of love due to her young age and slim figure, as well as her permissive conduct,21 while the other shows signs of age. With this contrasting analogy, Houellebecq draws a direct line between the autobiographical topos and conducting future relationships. Thus Bruno’s reaction to his wife is inferred as an act of hamartia, wrong and harmful, albeit unintentional, an intrinsic part of his nature due to his negligent upbringing. In discussing the transformations of feminine bodies in Houellebecq, Neli Dobreva raises the question of how it can be possible ← 55 | 56 → that a body once lusted after can again become asexual, almost inhuman, debris.22 Her answer ascribes this perpetual trajectory to the mother: the son’s fate was determined by her choices and actions; his awareness, sensibility, and imaginary cargo always refer back to her harmful and destructive parental conduct.