Michel Houellebecq: An Antimodern Modernist

Abstract

Michel Houellebecq is an exquisit example of the antimodern tradition which penetrates deeply into the core of modernity. This tradition is not new for it goes back to the very beginnings of the European modernity, and it perpetuates itself dialectically up to the present days. Antoine Compagnon in his recent book Les antimodernes. De Joseph de Maistre à Roland Barthes demonstrates that modernity, or rather the true modernity, has always been antimodern. Moreover, this underground current has a great cathartic value, because it enables man to gain the full conscience of him self. The tragic conscience of a dual existence cut from its origins, fallen and split. The antimodern modernity of Michel Houellebecq, like that of Baudelaire, the author of Spleen et Idéal, or of Nerval, the author of an emblematic poem entitled El Desdichado, implies a melancolic nostalgy, an attempt to recover the existential loss the extent of which is perfectly known to modern human, and which at the same time is never to be recovered. It is precisely in the context of dialectical tension between modern and antimodern, of permanent oscillation between the semantic poles of his manichean vision of the world that we wish to analyze the tormented imagination of Michel Houellebecq. We equally seek to demonstrate that this tension and this oscillation is not only inevitable, but above all it constitutes the existential experience of the late modernity, or postmodernity to be precise. In contrast to the common interpretations of Houellebecq as a provocative nihilist, we propose a different reading of his works, totally opposed to what the literary critics or the media tend to claim about him, a radically new vision whereby Michel Houellebecq may appear genial enough and yet perfectly misunderstood.