Houllebecq and the Sovereignty of Superficiality
Deutsche Wells attempts to force literature through the shallow and narrow prism of its 2nd-hand ideology.
I have not yet read Michel Houllebecq’s new novel ‘Annihilation’. But I have read Deutsche Well’s (DW) strange attempt to review it and grapple awkwardly with its themes. In having to review this ideologically atypical bestseller, DW is faced with an uncomfortable paradox. DW is an unambiguously establishment outlet and as such, its narrative must fit cosily within a wider nexus of orthodox establishment thought. Indeed, DW adopts the well-worn procedure of regurgitating one canonical opinion after another, lazily dragging parts of the material under review for a ‘compare and contrast’ with the aforementioned ‘core themes’ of establishment thought.
Yet.
In the other corner sits Michel Houellebecq, or rather his latest book, a withering if defeatist satire of several of the establishment’s sacred cows. Notably, DW appear unwilling or unable to fully denigrate his writing style. But Houellebecq is in every way a contrast to DW. He is decidedly uninterested in dwelling on the surface of pre-established ideas. He does not appear fooled by a constant, bellowing announcement of Progress or the claim that we are forever soaring upwards towards a new Utopia. Or, at least, he wants to open up and peek underneath these clumsy slogans and see if there is something rotting at their core. How then to square this circle and review the book while avoiding an implausible attack of an admittedly skilled writer and without condoning the man or his themes? How can Deutsche Wells overcome this paradox?
It is important that Houellebecq’s novels are often set in the near-future, and that they have often been highly predictive of events immediately occurrent during or after the book’s release. This speaks to the sensitivity of the artist, who is above all acutely aware of what is subtle in the world. And through this awareness, the artist may be able to achieve what scientists call ‘predictive validity’, correctly anticipating trends before they concretize. The validity of the prediction (so long as it is non-trivial) speaks to the powers of the predictor. For example, Submission (2015) was released just before the Bataclan massacre and Serotonin (2019) was planned and written before the yellow vest protests exploded, while both books dealt with highly pertinent topics to these events. Whether Houellebecq’s current book, set in 2027, will prove as prophetic remains to be seen. But the odds are in his favor.
So, what does Deutsche Wells have to say to all of this? How to reconcile the originality, intuition and craft of an author whose worldview is clearly unaligned with their own? Their take must denigrate the author and maintain the Narrative somehow, and how they do so is very interesting. Overall, DW submits to Houellebecq’s characteristic pessimism. We get an air of the ‘final hour before the bar closes’, the lights are turning out and someone is already sweeping the floor as dawn rises solemnly outside the window:
“Annihilate also describes the end of an era during which male social and political authority has gone unchallenged.
One character spends well over a page contemplating his infertile white sister-in-law's decision to have a Black child through artificial insemination. That he finds this impossible is hardly surprising. That he then goes on to fantasize that she may have have only wanted to humiliate her husband (his brother), who is also white, is an example of Houellebecq's treatment of so-called toxic masculinity.”
The Orthodoxy’s own narrative is forced upon Annihilate in a way we’ve come to expect. The malaise of modernity is due to an ascendant class of a/multi-gendered, non-binary, non-white protagonists who are triumphantly dethroning a sickly, old dying European World and rightfully taking their place at its reins. Such an occurrence is not the result of policy or initiative, it is simply the inevitable triumph of pure Goodness itself. On DW’s account, Houellebecq’s novels represent one of the final voices permitted to chronicle this near-finalized process before he wilfully succumbs to its overwhelming historical force.
Predictably, the author recommends two novelists of higher intrinsic moral worth to complement this process: “gay French author Edouard Louis describes men similar to those Houellebecq does, as does the French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani.” They will soon surpass white male authors like Houellebecq, who is praised to the extent he (by accident) toes the line; specifically, he is congratulated for sparing white men “no humiliation or weakness” (Humiliation as a tactic is heavily diffused throughout the current political sphere, though this is a topic for subsequent treatment). However, Houellebecq uses this device in service of a wider purpose; humiliation of its male protagonists is neither ritualized nor mandatory, as the reviewer might prefer. In a typical Houellebecq book, a depressive malaise uncovers the raw sadness of a world which still has periodic touches of sublime beauty, yet could ultimately be far better, if only it was not fixated of suffocating them out. Imagine a rubix cube only two turns away from symmetrical perfection but condemned to be forever out of synch. Or, alternatively, as DW think:
“His stories allow the reader to slip into the mind of someone who is frightened by equality — someone who would rather be lonely than give another person an equal footing.”
Of course, Houellebecq’s novels cannot be condensed to such a simple formula. And of course, no example of this simplistic ‘frightenedness’ is given. As is customary, no evidence is provided to back up the charges brought forward. It is declared that the sinner has sinned and that’s it. Nor is it clear what kind of ‘equality’ Houellebecq’s characters exemplify or advocate for. To call Deutsche Well’s position ‘left-wing’ would be an overestimation of their scope of considerations. After all, one enduring theme of Houellebecq’s work in his own words is the expansion of the free-market and economic liberalism into all spheres all life, most especially to the romantic-sexual sphere.
But since the 68’ sexual revolution constitutes part of the modern canon of unassailable truths requiring pious deference, any dialogue between the Houellebecqs of the world and a market-skeptical Left dissolves away. This is unfortunate, as the penetration of all aspects of human togetherness - family ties, community spirit, public celebrations, dating and sex, marriage, friendship - by the cold, calculating monstrosities of social media, advertising, technocapital and clumsy bureaucratic mandates could still be one of the most fruitful meeting points of left and right.
All in all, the review exemplifies what should be called the emerging Sovereignty of the Superficial. A kind of ‘survival of the shallow’, whereby the very nature of the information system selects for the mass-repetition of its slogans and platitudes and inhibits any deviation with increasing tightness, whereby any creative deviation from the system - including this book - must be absorbed back in, repurposed, and made to somehow support the prevailing narrative again. Hence, Annihilate ‘proves’ the inherent malevolence of the Frenchman nostalgic only for his own unearned privelege instead of offering an alternative viewpoint to this core premise. As a consequence of this slow-and-steady drip of repetition, uninspired prejudices soon become enshrined facts, the tentacles of which reabsorb creative deviations into the same body of mundanity.
But perhaps we can take refuge in one aspect on the story, told in analogy by Houellebecq himself. At the half-way point in the review mentions:
This is what happens to Annihilate protagonist Paul: At the very moment he finally rediscovers love for his wife, he is diagnosed with tongue cancer. He will die if his tongue is not removed.
Unsurprisingly, Paul decides that he would rather lose his life than his tongue. He doesn't tell his wife, of course, that he would have a better chance of survival if he had the surgery; her job is to take care of him while he slips away.
While a very straight-forward metaphor, the reviewer apparently misses its meaning: Paul would rather die from continuing to speak instead of allowing the organ of speech - his tongue - to be surgically removed. Indeed, the way his tongue stands to be removed, not through some grisly torture but surgically, with foresight and calculation, mirrors the way in which the few truth-tellers who find mainstream success must now ultimately be reinterpreted to serve the very narratives they rejected.
And so here I try (implausibly or otherwise) to derive an ethic from a review I hate of a book I have not read: the refusal to have our tongues cut out, to continue to think, speak and write nonetheless, represents the greatest antidote to endless inanity of a society caught in worship of the Sovereignty of the Superficial. The tongue gives birth to speech and as long as we nurture what comes out of it, the Sovereignty of Superficiality will always find pockets of autonomy within the borders of its kingdom.
Original review here: https://p.dw.com/p/45NWv