Any effort to decipher Valérie’s character in personal psychological terms is futile; Houellebecq creates his characters as concepts, a means to reflect a cultural situation. Valérie is an embodiment of the transformations that have occurred in subjectivity manifested in desire, recognition, and passion. If this is a unique, one-time love, it is very different to the emotional strength, devotion, self-sacrifice, and absolutely profound connection independent of the fulfillment of needs. It is but a limited, albeit deep, bond; the contemporary subject aspires to the romantic sublime, the emergence from the self, although that subjectivity is based on self-awareness and artificial images which give uncensored expression to passions and the desire for pleasure. The result resembles role-playing the collective fantasy of couplehood; Valérie’s part as a seductress who pleasures her partner is the confirmation of a relationship, yet the relationship will be shattered if she doesn’t pleasure him with oral sex after a long day’s ← 64 | 65 → work.40 Her perfect complicity with the social order is insinuated when, during their first stay on the beach in Thailand, Michel stares at Valérie’s bare nipples and contemplates how some women “adapt to the rules of the game so easily” (Platform, p. 89) «acceptent si facilement les termes du jeu.» (Plateforme, pp. 123)].
Notwithstanding, Michel’s relationship with Valérie does not demand excessive effort, the kind that usually causes Houellebecq’s protagonists to withdraw from romantic connections. Perhaps if Valérie had not been killed before her time in a terror attack, their relationship may have ended in the same way as those of Houellebecq’s other protagonists, the moment an assessment of cost-effectiveness began to indicate negative returns. Total self-sacrifice and devotion to the partner do not develop. Indeed, the partnership as depicted by Houellebecq does not resemble the merging of two bodies into one, as portrayed by the traditional romantic approach to love, but rather a relationship of individuals with their own, clearly defined, needs; if the needs of the two component parts are inconsistent, the lovers may part ways. This great love is built on a foundation of quicksand.
Thus, faithful to his poetics of passive-activism, Houellebecq represents simultaneously a genuine great love and a mockery of it; if this is true love, it also borders on a parody of couplehood. At one and the same time his characters are suffused with thought-habits dominated by the capitalistic system, experiencing true love and an unsparing portrayal of the limits of couplehood sustained by this very system.
Fathers, Mothers, and Sons
Bauman emphasizes the importance of the decision to become parents as a signal of defiance against the strategies of pursuing happiness prevalent in modern society. This is a decision that necessitates unconditional and eternal commitment: there is no going back on this deal. As a responsibility that surmounts the ephemeral and circumstantial, it goes against every aspect of what is considered the ‘good life’ in ‘liquid’ modern consumer ← 65 | 66 → society.41 In the families portrayed by Houellebecq, soon after children are born they come to be considered an unbearable burden. On the basis of the impaired familial relationships depicted in his novels, the infant is destined to suffer and to generate suffering for its surroundings from the day of its birth. This situation only worsens with adolescence, when the child joins the struggle and competes with his father, as Bruno in The Elementary Particles explains: “In a couple of years his son would try to go out with girls his own age; the same fifteen-year-old girls that Bruno lusted after. They would come to be rivals – which was the natural relationship between men. They would be like animals fighting in a cage.» (Particles, pp. 138–139) [«Dans deux ans tout au plus, son fils essaierait de sortir avec des filles de son âge; ces filles de quinze ans, Bruno les désirerait lui aussi. Ils approchaient de l’état de rivalité, état naturel des hommes. Ils étaient comme des animaux se battant dans la même cage.» (Particules, p. 167)]. In Houellebecq’s novels, positive expressions of childhood are few and far between, with a constant emphasis that such experiences are unusual and short-lived; adolescence is around the corner. Here and there, suffering infants evoke a feeling of responsibility or compassion among some of the characters, but far too rarely. Mostly, parents find it impossible to demonstrate feelings of either love or enchantment toward their children, as is noted with regard to parents who abandon their children in The Elementary Particles – “The couple quickly realized that the burden of caring for a small child was incompatible with their ideal of personal freedom” (Particles, p. 22) [«Les soins fastidieux que réclame l’élevage d’un enfant parurent vite au couple incompatibles avec leur idéal de liberté personnelle.» (Particules, p. 28)].
As was discussed above, the autobiographical topos of parental desertion recurs repeatedly throughout the novels, underscoring its heavy impact. It is diachronically duplicated as Houellebecq describes two generations of parents who abandon their children in one family and it is synchronically reproduced when the very same maltreatment occurs in other families sharing an identical familial dysfunction. A case of such transmission across generations takes place in The Elementary Particles. Of the two deserted brothers, Michel grows up unable to form intimate relationships and consequently never marries or has a family; Bruno marries and has a son, but abandons him in a manner similar to the way he himself ← 66 | 67 → was abandoned. Bruno, whom his mother meets again only at the age of 15, writes in regard to his own son Victor: “I knew perfectly well that the real reason we were going back to Paris was to make the divorce easier” (Particles, p. 155) [«Je me rendais très bien compte qu’au fond on rentrait à Paris pour pouvoir divorcer tranquillement.» (Particules, p. 186)]. Despite the harm caused to him as a child, when he grows up Bruno does not hesitate to allow the same situation to repeat itself and even aggravates it, crossing the line from neglect to deliberate abuse: Bruno adds a “sedative to Victor’s bottle” to silence his cries (Particles, p. 151) [«je rajoutais un somnifère au biberon de Victor» (Particules, p. 181)]. In later life, the relationship between grandfather, father, and son – Serge, Bruno, and Victor – is described as a connection that is continually fading; the child’s need for his father is met with indifference and even hostility. A summary of this situation is also given by Michel in Platform, “not only do the little shits ruin your life, afterwards, they get to profit from everything you’ve managed to save” (p. 17) [«non seulement les petits salauds vous pourrissent la vie, mais ils profitent ensuite de tout ce que vous avez pu accumuler» (Plateforme, p. 28)].
To reinforce the argument, Houellebecq adds to his texts parallel stories of parental neglect and dysfunctional families. Christiane’s husband, too, deserted his progeny, in a manner similar to Janine’s: “I suppose he [son] missed his father, I don’t know […] one thing I do know, his father didn’t need him […] then he moved down to the south to be with his new girlfriend, and he stopped visiting altogether.” (Particles, p. 123) [«Son père lui a peut-être manqué, mais je ne sais pas […]. Ce qui est sûr, c’est que lui n’avait aucun besoin de son fils. […] quand il [le père] est parti s’installer dans le Sud avec sa nouvelle copine, il a complètement arrêté [de vois son fils].» (Particules, p. 148)]. Platform also contains similar analogies, such as Jean-Yves’s cold relationship with both his parents and his children (p. 107; Plateforme, p. 145 ], and this is also emphasized by contrasting analogies with functional households such as Annabelle’s in The Elementary Particles and the rural families in Whatever.
In The Possibility of an Island, the reader witnesses how Daniel1 deserts his son and the Prophet abandons Vincent; the latter duplicates the autobiographical topos, as displayed in The Elementary Particles, when Vincent admits that “during the first years, I practically didn’t see him [his father]; he wasn’t interested in young children (Possibility, p. 196) [«pendant les premières années, je ne l’ai pratiquement pas vu, il ne s’intéressait ← 67 | 68 → pas aux enfants jeunes.» (Possibilité, p. 278)]. Vincent’s own mother had committed suicide and he was raised by his grandparents.
Parental alienation is further intensified by Daniel1’s remark that “On the day of my son’s suicide, I made a tomato omelet. […] I had never loved that child: he was as stupid as his mother, and as nasty as his father. His death was far from a catastrophe; you can live without such human beings.” (Possibility, p. 20) [«Le jour du suicide demonfils, je me suis fait des œufs à la tomate.[…] Je n’avais jamais aimé cet enfant: il était aussi bête que sa mère, et aussi méchant que son père. Sa disparition était loin d’être une catastrophe; des êtres humains de ce genre, on peut s’en passer.» (Possibilité, pp. 28–29)]. Upon hearing Vincent’s story, Daniel1 asserts candidly that “they [his grandparents] had welcomed him in any case, they had opened the doors of their home to him, and this was something, for example, that I would never have done for my own son (Possibility, p. 222; emphasis added) [«ils [ses grands-parents] l’avaient accueilli en tout cas, il lui avaient ouvert les portes de leur foyer, et c’était une chose par exemple que je n’aurais jamais faite pour mon propre fils.» (Possibilité, p. 314; emphasis added)]. The problem of impaired parent-child relationships is also apparent in the opposite direction: grown offspring abandon their aging parents. Janine’s mother realizes that “her daughter deserted her” (Particles, p. 32) [«sa fille l’avait abandonnée» (Particules, p. 40)] when she did not attend “her own father’s funeral” (Particles, p. 33) [«elle n’est pas venue à l’enterrement de son père» (Particules, p. 40)], a shock from which she never manages to recover.
In the background of all these familial relations lies the crisis of the family in contemporary Western life, the decreasing size of the family, the number of children, and the time devoted to them. Increased divorce rates, the rise in the standard of living, greater mobility – all these have turned children into little more than a nuisance.42 In this context, Neil Postman identifies a new cultural category of conduct – the adult-child,43 an adult who aspires to measure up to the child in terms of political consciousness, judgment, and emotional capacities. The adult-child refuses to assume responsibility for his aging parents on the one hand, or for his own children on the other. He is narcissistic, irresponsible, and committed only ← 68 | 69 → to his own personal needs: Houellebecq’s protagonists are examples of this adult-child, abandoned or neglected by their own parents, and in turn, abandoning or neglecting their children:
The adult-child may be defined as a grown-up whose intellectual and emotional capacities are unrealized and, in particular, not significantly different from those associated with children. Such grown-ups have always existed, but cultures vary in the degree to which they encourage or discourage this characterological pattern. In the Middle-Ages the adult-child was a normal condition, in large measure because in the absence of literacy, school and civilité no special discipline or learning was required in order to be an adult. For somewhat similar reasons the adult-child is emerging as normal in our own culture.44
Postman further claims that the emergence of the old-person’s home as a major social institution bespeaks a reluctance on the part of adults to assume full responsibility for their parents. Caring for the elderly and integrating them into family life are now apparently considered an intolerable burden and no longer imperative. Adults want neither to be parents to children nor responsible for the elderly; they want to be children themselves.45 In Houellebecq’s novels, the generation of the grandparents, who often take the place of parents evading all responsibility, is described as a default; they can only serve as substitute parents, not a solution. In the essay “D’abord, la souffrance” [The suffering first] (Rester Vivant et autres textes, in particular pp. 9–11), Houellebecq draws an explicit parallel between a suffering old man and a suffering child. The helpless states of both are described in detail, emphasizing and portraying their secretions unambiguously. The children and elderly in Houellebecq’s books arouse the adult-child’s hostility, never eliciting the necessary empathy or sense of responsibility. Such a comparison arises with the parallel descriptions of baby Michel “slipping occasionally in pools of urine or excrement” (Particles, p. 24) [«glissant de temps en temps dans une flaque d’urine ou d’excréments» (Particules, pp. 30–31)] and his mother on her deathbed, ← 69 | 70 → as a “dark-haired figure” (Particles, p. 211; emphasis added) [«la créature brunâtre» (Particules, p. 255; emphasis added)]. Both are helpless mortal shapes without individual presence, with it becoming dubious as to whether or not they are deserving of dignity and care.
Houellebecq often phrases his descriptions of the dying elderly in a manner that parallels the state of neglected babies; they are “simply a creature of flesh and blood who seemed both very young and very old” (Particles, p. 76) [«c’était une pauvre créature de chair, à la fois très jeune et très vieille» (Particules, p. 90)]. The Elementary Particles also includes an analogy hinting at the similar wretchedness of babies and the elderly. So too, Michel’s father in Platform is described in his wretched old age. It is almost as though the young and old are constant victims of the adult-child, a state which Daniel1 defines as one of the West’s ‘bad instincts’, which is
an incitement to children to treat their parents without the least humanity, the least pity, and that there was nothing new or original about this, it had been the same in all the cultural sectors for the last fifty-odd years, and this supposedly cultural tendency in fact only hid the desire for a return to a primitive state where the young got rid of the old without ceremony, with no questions asked, simply because they were too weak to defend themselves. (Possibility, p. 149)
[«inciter les enfants à se comporter envers leurs parents sans la moindre humanité, sans la moindre pitié, et que cela n’avait rien de nouveau ni d’original, c’était la même chose dans tous les secteurs culturels depuis une cinquantaine d’années, cette tendance prétendument culturelle ne dissimulait en fait que le désir d’un retour à l’état primitif où les jeunes se débarrassaient des vieux sans ménagements, sans états d’âme, simplement parce qu’ils étaient trop faibles pour se défendre…» (Possibilité, p. 210)]
This declaration is pronounced by the man who rid himself of his own son; thus destablilizing the harsh criticism of the social tendency. Once again, this exhibits a manifestation of complicity and subversion, which is the marker of Houellebecq’s poetics of passive-activism.
In Houellebecq’s world, children are worthless, poorly influential, a plaything in the hands of irresponsible and cruel adults, even sexually exploited. The inclusion of pedophilia (in particular see “La question pédophile”, Interventions 2, pp. 159–162)46 in Houellebecq’s works is also ← 70 | 71 → connected with this poetic model and straddles two related topics discussed in this chapter – the sexualized relationship market and parenthood. While a liberal sex regime is a social imperative, some constraints remain intact: one of these is the prohibition against sex with minors. Yet Houellebecq integrates viewpoints on incest and pedophilia into his books, principally to highlight the moral acquiescence to these phenomena voiced by various characters, such as the Elohimite Church in The Possibility of an Island, the Raelians in Lanzarote, and the libertine cult of Di Meola in The Elementary Particles. All enlist a pseudo-psychological rationale for the introduction of pedophilia as a legitimate, even natural practice.47
In one sense, including this subject is a marker of Houellebecq’s political incorrectness, as is suggested by Muriel Lucie Clément. Houellebecq habitually touches upon major and minor social interdictions and defies the doxa as a principle. In other words, the infringement of the taboo is deliberately provocative.48 McCann understands Houellebecq’s treatment of the topic in the context of younger generations renouncing any responsibility towards the old and negligence toward the Other, who is also a relative.49 In keeping with the latter elucidation, I suggest reading Houellebecq’s preoccupation with pedophilia as providing a content-plane that distills the cultural state of family and kinship by stretching the logic of shirking responsibility ad absurdum. Pedophilia is a blur
ring of the distinction between the adult and the child pushed to the limit, the dissolution of the adult’s responsibility for the child, and complete alienation in place protection and support. Since in Houellebecq’s texts pedophilia is always a cult-related deviance and involves the consent of the children’s parents ← 71 | 72 → or pure incest, its presence is also an admission that the moment a person decides to have children, he becomes destructive.
Houellebecq always places pedophilia within closed groups of sexualized transgressive interpretive communities; he does not portray it as acts of individuals. Carl B. Holmberg explains that sexualized interpretive communities are involved in challenging taboos, as
Taboos demarcate the edge of a culture’s domain of permissible performance of selfhood and community; taboos are borders. An edge, however, suggests a place individuals, pairs and groups can teeter before going over the edge and transgressing that border […] individuals ‘on edge’ may be consciously or unconsciously intensified in their awareness of themselves, others and the situations in which they find themselves.50
Houellebecq only portrays organized pedophilia, and in so doing indicates that his aim is not to examine the extremes of sexual practices but rather the limits of the social borders of responsibility toward children; a violation of the taboo is intended to put on trial general abuse, in a broad sense, of a group marginalized by age. The inclusion of offensive materials of sexual transgression terrorizes the reader, preventing him from grasping the value of the issue, namely playing at the extremes with the betrayal of parents; it goes almost unnoticed because the loss of intimacy, dependence, and loyalty that traditionally characterized the parent-child relationship is now common and within the public-promoted norms. Pedophilia is the limit of this initial transgression, of allowing the victimization of children by their own family.
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