An Officer of Civilization

by Nurit Buchweitz

  At the same time, once again in compliance with the hybrid model of passive-activism, of cooperating with the market as a form of identification and countering it as a form of dissidence, Daniel1 is deeply moved by Vincent’s installation; it causes him to feel shaken [“I was visibly shaken” (Possibility, p. 108 [“J’étais visiblement secoué” (Possibilité, p. 156)]). The ekphrasis is imbued with minute details that reflect an understanding and appreciation of the work, since the narrator gazes at it and recounts his impressions. Not only is he an excellent spectator, conscious of the multi-leveled devices of the installation, but the effect on him is overwhelming: he completely loses track of time.

  Moreover, the novel treats its historic topics and narrative strategies as forms of excess, including trauma – the mother’s suicide; violence – Houellebecq’s death; and tensions – the father-son relationship. These themes are overly mediated by the presence of ‘Michel Houellebecq’ who, as a writer, must have an eye for sensationalism, as a complementary asset to his art. ← 114 | 115 →

  Crime Fiction

  The substantial portion of The Map and the Territory concerning the unfolding investigation into Michel Houellebecq’s murder is written as a police procedural,34 a subgenre of detective fiction which aims at achieving verisimilitude and realistic illusion. The crime in the novel and the detective work following it adhere to the novel’s general portrayal of the connections between art and money, since the portrait of ‘Houellebecq’ is apparently the motive for an abominable crime.

  The solving of Houellebecq’s murder is not, however, the conclusion of The Map and the Territory and also happens by pure chance, irrespective of the police’s efforts and expertise; Houellebecq defies the genre even though he introduces it into the narrative in full force. Thus it could be inferred that the use of this genre adheres in another way to the narrative, probably since “to examine a culture one need only to examine its crimes”.35

  The murder was committed by an art collector who stole Jed’s portrait of Houellebecq because he wished to own the painting himself. His crime was probably motivated by a love of art, although it was not entirely free of interest in the market value of the picture. The fact that the murder was committed by a collector wishing to profit from the picture accentuates the image of the art market as characterized by “asset-price hyperinflation”.36

  At the same time, employing the conventions of the police procedural turns, once again, to the cultural field of mass production. As with all detective fiction and thrillers, it serves as a form of immediate suspense, appealing to the basic instincts of the reader who is eager to find closure, suspense, and surprise in literature. Well aware of the conventionality of the genre, the reader expects the plot to head toward the end, where the ← 115 | 116 → crime will be solved and curiosity appeased. Crime fiction is typically and traditionally linked with non-canonic literature,37 as a genre that achieves full closure and a full resolution of conflict, making it an easy read and for this reason apparently sustaining only a single reading. It is also a genre that involves excess, especially in regard to violence and transgression. Houellebecq’s literary equivalent to employing the non-canonical is his use of the police procedural, parallel to Koons’s and Hirst’s use of the non-canonic. By way of this genre a clinical representation of violence is included in the text – “The head of the victim was intact, cut off cleanly and placed on one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace. A small pool of blood had formed on the dark green velvet. Facing him on the sofa the head of a big black dog had also been cleanly cut off. The rest was a massacre, a senseless carnage of strips of flesh scattered across the floor.” (Map, p. 181) [«La tête était intacte, tranchée net, posée sur un des fauteuils devant la cheminée, une petite flaque de sang s’était formée sur le velours vert sombre; lui faisant face sur le canapé, la tête d’un chien noir, de grande taille, avait elle aussi été tranchée net. Le reste était un massacre, un carnage insensé, des lambeaux, des lanières de chair éparpillés à même le sol.» (Carte, pp. 287–288)].

  In crime fiction, detective novels, and thrillers, crimes are generally motivated by money. Here the crime’s solution is a mise-en-abyme of the novel’s thesis: while the motive for the murder at first seems to be pure love of art, based on the artistic value of the stolen painting, it is revealed on a deeper level to be economic in nature, according to the commercial value of the painting, whose price is definitely not based on its intrinsic artistic worth but rather upon its market value. This also highlights hyper-inflated pricing as a crime, indicative of a social problem.

  What Houellebecq, Koons, and Hirst share is a profound reading of the artistic territory, of the cultural production of the field of art, and cooperation with its power relations by means of voyeuristic materials. By including such materials, all three artists ensure that their works are ← 116 | 117 → not received unequivocally by readers/viewers and critics. These artists create maximum visibility for themselves, understanding that in this territory they must maintain constant visibility.38 The metaphor of visibility underlies the transformation from viewer into voyeur. ← 117 | 118 →

  ← 118 | 119 →

  1 Denis Demonpion, Houellebecq Non Autorisé: Enquête sur un Phénomène (Paris: Maren Sell Editeurs, 2005), p. 350 (my translation). On Houellebecq as a highly publicized media figure and his exploitation of the media see Douglas Morrey, Michel Houellebecq: Humanity and its Aftermath (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 1–12l; and Ruth Cruickshank, Fin de Millénaire French Fiction: The Aesthetics of Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 114–122. Conversely, Patricola analyzes the Houellebecqian phenomenon pejoratively, dismissing the author as a fraud, see Jean-Francois Patricola, Michel Houellebecq ou la Provocation Permanente (Paris: Ecriture, 2005), p. 27, on account of his being an «implacable machinerie commerciale» (p. 12). Patricola goes on to blame the French readership for participating in the general attraction to Houellebecq, since evidently «quelque chose est pourri dans l’ancien royaume de France» (ibid. p. 279).

  2 Maxim Görke, Articuler la Conscience Malheureuse: A Propos du Cynisme dans L’Oeuvre de Michel Houellebecq (Grin Verlag 2008 /Ebook 2013), pp. 345–357. Görke maintains that the disparity is also between winning and losing.

  3 Ellis Cashmore, “Celebrity in the Twenty-First Century Imagination”, Cultural and Social History 8/3 (2011): pp. 405–413.

  4 Ernest H. Gombrich, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, trans. by Bruria Ben-Baruch (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad & Sifriyat Poalim, 1983), p. 11 [Hebrew].

  5 John Draeger, “What Peeping Tom Did Wrong”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (2010). Available at: (accessed 14–8–13).

  6 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 29–73.

  7 Ibid., pp. 115–116, and rephrased in the editor’s introduction (p. 15).

  8 The central figure in this move was Eduard Manet, with his revolutionary refusal to abide by the institutional demands of the official art exhibition, the Salon des Beaux Arts. Manet and the impressionists that followed him contributed to the legitimatization of pure expression and art for art’s sake, which is inseparable from the existence of an autonomic field of art. Manet will be referred to again later in this chapter. See Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. by Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 71–77; 121–124.

  9 See Alon Idan,”The Art of Sale”, Musa 6 (2001): pp. 30–37 [Hebrew]. Houellebecq hints at some of the dangers of commercial bodies entering into this field.

  10 Michael Findlay, The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty (Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2012), p. 155. Findlay cites the biographies of various famous art collectors, which shed first-hand light on the shift that commenced with pop-art and reached its peak in the present day. He also quotes the Ame
rican gallery owner Jeffery Deitch, who testified that the art world today is “not just a market – it’s a visual culture industry, like the film industry, or the fashion industry and it merges with both of them […]. We live in an increasingly culture-based economy, and the value of art is in synch with other tangible assets now, like real estate.” (p. 149).

  11 Ibid., p. 61.

  12 Ibid., especially pp. 153–156.

  13 An anecdote which aptly demonstrates this situation was recounted by one of my students. Reading Lanzarote while riding on a bus, he arrived at passages containing explicitly sexual content. This made him extremely self conscious, and aware of his surroundings, as he was seen consuming pornography in a bus full of people. He quickly closed the book.

  14 Robert Storr provides an acute description of the field of art today: “The usual mix-up between art and merchandise is replaced by the mix-up between merchandize and financial tools […] paintings are a tool for transferring money and a place to park the money while waiting for an improved investment opportunity” (quoted in Tommer Genihar, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Cute Man (Interview with Robert Storr”, Haaretz, 27 February, 2012 [Hebrew].

  15 Angelika Muthesius (ed.), Jeff Koons (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1992), p. 132.

  16 Sometimes referred to as baroque or rococo, see Jean-Christophe Ammann, “Jeff Koons: Triumph out of Failure”, in Angelika Muthesius (ed.), Jeff Koons (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1992), p. 9.

  17 Excerpts from the original Made in Heaven ensemble of pieces were exhibited as part of the 2009 Pop Life Exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. Made in Heaven was displayed in a separate room, the entrance to which was age restricted, accompanied by a sign warning viewers that some may find it offensive.

  18 This is the title of the exhibition, the actual meaning of Made in Heaven, although we must consider Koons’s later emphasis in his remarks.

  19 Muthesius, Jeff Koons, p. 127.

  20 Ibid., p. 126.

  21 There is much controversy surrounding the value of Hirst’s oeuvre, in light of the massive marketing methods he employs. Fierce criticism in this respect has been expressed by art critic Robert Hughes, who disapproves of Hirst’s transformation of art into business and denigrates his artistic skills. See Elie Armon-Azoulay, “Free Radical (on Robert Hughes)”, Haaretz, 13 August, 2012 [Hebrew].

  22 In a comic turn of events, public health authorities in Japan prohibited the entry of the piece due to Japan’s import ban on British beef (“Japan Beef Ban Leaves Damien Hirst’s Cow Art in Pickle”, Daily Mail, 4 October, 2008).

  23 Ian Chilvers and John Glaves-Smith, Oxford Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 321.

  24 Ibid.

  25 Brian Dillon dryly remarks “’divided’ being Hirst’s neutral term for the laborious and messy process of bisecting or slicing a cow or sheep”’ in Ann Gallagher (ed.), Damien Hirst (London: Tate, 2012), p. 23.

  26 Chilvers and Glaves-Smith, Oxford Dictionary of Modern Art, p. 320.

  27 These figures appear as fictional personages, altering the factuality of their extra-textual existence. For example, French author Frederic Beigbeder dies of old age in The Map and the Territory.

  28 The Houellebecq affair is the public controversy and legal process following the publication of Les Particules Elémentaires and Plateforme. See Ruth Cruickshank, Fin de Millénaire French Fiction: The Aesthetics of Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 116–122.

  29 This technique blurs the ontological boundaries between fiction and reality, as is explained by Brian McHale: “Transworld identity between real-world persons and fictional characters depends upon identity of proper names; this is part of its definition. What fixes our attention on the ontological boundary is the appearance of a real-world proper name in a fictional context. ‘Steve Katz’, ‘Ronnie Sukenick’, ‘Gabriel Garcìa Márquez’ […] – attached to a fictional character: this is the source of the ontological scandal”. See Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London and New York: Routledge 1992), p. 206.

  30 Jackson Pollock’s “drip” techniques of painting were documented by photographer Hans Namuth and contributed to the artist’s fame, in what was to be a paradigm of the significance of media coverage in raising the economic value of an artist in the art market. Notwithstanding, these very methods have been criticized as an example of artistic charlatanism and of the recklessness and fraudulence of contemporary art, see Ruthie Director, “The Ship of Fools”, Musa 2 (2000): pp. 30–33 [Hebrew].

  31 Slavoj Žižek, as quoted by Wood, see Catherine Wood, “Capitalist Realness”, in Jack Bankowsky, Alison M. Gingeras and Catherine Wood (eds.), Pop Life: Art in a Material World (London: Tate, 2009), p. 52.

  32 Sarland brings Peter Hollindale’s classification of expression of ideology (in relation to his study of children’s literature) to explain that a passive overt ideology is “where views of the world are put into characters’ mouths or otherwise incorporated into the narrative with no overt ironic distancing”. See Charles Sarland, “The Impossibility of Innocence: Ideology, Politics, and Children’s Literature”, in Peter Hunt (ed.), Understanding Children’s Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 47.

  33 Jurga analyses these T-shirts as a form of Language Art, which he understands as one of the artistic forms employed by Houellebecq in his novels. Other forms are Body Art and Carnal Art. See Antoine Jurga, “L’entreprise de l’art dans le Romanesque Houellebecqien”, in Murielle Lucie Clément and Sabine van Wesemael (eds.), Michel Houellebecq à la Une (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 150–163.

  34 The Police Procedural depicts a team of professionals working together to solve a crime. See Christina Gregoriou, Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 55–58 for the conventions of this genre.

  35 Woody Haut, Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1999), pp. 2–3.

  36 Findlay borrows venture capitalist Eric Janszen’s phrase in describing the contemporary art market, see Michael Findlay, Value of Art, (Munich, London and New York: Prestel, 2012), p. 151.

  37 Although recent criticism has refuted the categorization of crime literature as necessarily non-canonical, it is still perceived as such, largely on the basis of the fact that “crime fiction’s large readership constitutes the genre as ‘popular’” (Gregoriou, Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction, 15). Likewise, the genre’s origins can be traced back to pulp fiction and modern detective novels largely circulated in pulp publishing (Lee Horsley, Twentieth Century Crime Fiction [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005], pp. 76–78).

  38 In Sexuellement Correct, Clément argues that the laws of market economy which have penetrated sexual relations have also infiltrated the literary market, forming a third system of classification based on money and resulting in general impoverishment. She claims that in a censored literary system, one which maintains its prohibitions, anyone can succeed, more or less, and dependent upon talent. Yet in an absolutely liberal system, some become infinitely rich while others wallow in misery and remain out of work. See Murielle Lucie Clément, Michel Houellebecq: Sexuellement Correct (Saarbrücken: Editions Universitaires Européennes, 2010), pp. 123–124.

  The Cult of Happiness: A Gnostic Theology

  The motto of Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island is “Who, among you, deserves eternal life?” (Qui, parmivous, mérite la vie éternelle?). This theological question is intended to guide believers to follow a morally appropriate path – principally emphasizing restraining one’s urges and carefully preserving virtues as the highest moral values – in order to gain rewards in the next life. The question of meriting eternal life is a central issue not only in The Possibility of an Island but throughout all of Houellebecq’s writing, interwoven with questions regarding the possibility of religious belief in a secularized capitalist world. From his earliest prose works, Hoguellebecq employs the t
erminology of religion and faith and hints at doubts concerning their existence/absence in our postmodern world. Indeed, his first novel, Whatever, opens with a motto taken from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,1 and the topic is fully developed in the novella Lanzarote and later in The Possibility of an Island.

  Houellebecq’s basic intuitions regarding the state of the world are largely gnostic. Sandrine Schiano-Bennis writes that “In all of the contemporary history […], a modern gnostic would consider it as the inevitable outcome of the permanent scandal of the existence of the world and of men as they are” [«Dans tout ce que l’histoire contemporaine […] un gnostique d’aujourd’hui y verrait le fatal aboutissement de ce scandale permanent qu’est l’existence du monde et de l’homme tels qu’ils sont.»].2 As a religious and philosophical movement, gnosticism bears a similarity to Houellebecq’s world in that it is a cosmophobic experience, built on belief in the deep worthlessness of existence’s very essence. Metaphorically – and at times literally, as in The Possibility of an Island – the world Houellebecq ← 119 | 120 → describes is a huge hell, an arid apocalypse. The gnostic sharply recoils from being thrown into an evil, alien, and absurd world, one toward which he feels no affinity, precisely the attitude expressed in all of Houellebecq’s works, which reject the world as a repulsive secretion and blasphemy.3 The world is secularized from beginning to end, and it terminates only with the obliteration of everything human. This annihilation can be either individual and metaphoric – separation from society, suicide, or hospitalization in a sanatorium (as in the conclusions of Whatever, Platform, and The Elementary Particles) – or collective and literal, humanity being replaced with a cloned neohumanity (as in The Elementary Particles and The Possibility of an Island).