An Officer of Civilization

by Nurit Buchweitz

  When we get to the point that life can’t be prolonged any further, we’ll be killed off by voluntary euthanasia; quick, discreet, emotionless. The society that Huxley describes in Brave New World is happy; tragedy and extremes of human emotion have disappeared. Sexual liberation is total – nothing stands in the way of instant gratification. Oh, there are little moments of depression, of sadness or doubt, but they’re easily dealt with using advances in antidepressants and tranquilizers. ‘One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.’ This is exactly the sort of world we’re trying to create, the world we want to live in.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ Bruno went on, waving his hand as if to dismiss an objection Michel had not voiced. ‘Everyone says Brave New World is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment of society, but that’s hypocritical bullshit. Brave New World is our idea of heaven; genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society. This is precisely the world that we have tried – and so far failed – to create. (Particles, pp. 130–131) ← 157 | 158 →

  [“La société décrite par Brave New World est une société heureuse, dont ont disparu la tragédie et les sentiments extrêmes. La liberté sexuelle y est totale, plus rien n’y fait obstacle à l’épanouissement et au plaisir. Il demeure de petits moments de dépression, de tristesse et de doute; mais ils sont facilement traités par voie médicamenteuse, la chimie des antidépresseurs et des anxiolytiques a fait des progrès considérables. ‘Avec un centicube, guéris dix sentiments.’ C’est exactement le monde auquel aujourd’hui nous aspirons, le monde dans lequel, aujourd’hui, nous souhaiterions vivre.

  ‘Je sais bien,’ continua Bruno avec un mouvement de la main comme pour balayer une objection que Michel n’avait pas faite, qu’on décrit en général l’univers d’Huxley comme un cauchemar totalitaire, qu’on essaie de faire passer ce livre pour une dénonciation virulente; c’est une hypocrisie pure et simple. Sur tous les points – contrôle génétique, liberté sexuelle, lutte contre le vieillissement, civilisation des loisirs, Brave New World est pour nous un paradis, c’est en fait exactement le monde que nous essayons, jusqu’à présent sans succès, d’atteindre.’” (Particules, pp. 156–157)]

  In the future imagined by Houellebecq, ways are sought to resolve the post-humans’ hardships, in particular the loss of youth and the travails of love and sex, which are subject to the laws of the marketplace. The neohuman of the future fully realizes this fantasy vision. The neohumans are cloned – the clone being a cell, the nucleus of which is removed and replaced with a donor nucleus (utilizing the method used to clone Dolly the sheep). The cloned bodies and lives of neohumans are based on those of their predecessors. The duplication resolves the problem of physical deterioration and bestows immortality – the body renews itself by growing a replacement that will house the memories of the original human individual. Consequently, memory is a central element guaranteeing the success of cloning by preserving the continuity of the human consciousness. Indeed, the memories of Daniel1 are transferred from one clone to another and forever preserved, although each cloned generation is less and less able to understand them. The neohumans live in isolation, within a closed, secure environment; anything outside their territory is considered unknown and alien. In the face of the hordes of savages outside the compounds, the superiority of the neohuman is not only economic or technical, but also ‘natural’ – the desires of the neohuman have been nullified and consequently they are continuously satisfied. The absolute autonomy of the neohuman is attained through disconnection (déliaison), lack of contact and lack of connection, including no loving relationships.31 On the ← 158 | 159 → one hand, this provides the neohuman individual with total freedom, disassociated from others, separated from the travails of the world, protected from emotional suffering. On the other, he is an engineered creature who lives outside the world and cannot experience it. When Daniel25, in The Possibility of an Island, leaves his insulated living environment and ventures out into the open, he is unable to have sexual relations (with a real, human woman, not a neohuman one) because he finds her smell both riveting and horrifying: reality slaps the clone in the face (p. 319 [Possibilité, p. 460–461]).

  The connection between future neohumans and the post-humans of the present is clear, coinciding with a principle of Houellebecq’s writing – the principle of outcomes.32 Outcome is the point of departure for Houellebecq and can help us to understand his poetic world. He frequently reminds us that social phenomena do not drop from heaven and appear ex nihilo, but rather are always the outcome of something in the past. What appears to be something new is in most cases an outcome, emanating from our ancient forbears to whom we remain connected. This outcome is a process of differentiation and separation which can never end with absolute disconnection. Houellebecq’s characters are based on this derivative principle: they are the results of their past, they bear the scars of their histories, and this past also becomes a net that traps them (Houellebecq refers mainly to the heritage of the sixties as the original sin). It becomes obvious that the neohuman is the outcome of the post-human, which is in turn the outcome of the human (in the term’s limited meaning as an historical-chronological label). Neohumans are the outcome of degeneration into conformity and comfort, the post-human’s consumption without productivity. As for neohumans, the principle of outcomes is not abstract, but is rather hardwired into their genetic makeup because they are a duplication of their predecessors, bound by a genetic tie that they cannot unravel.

  With hyperbole, extremism, and defiance, but also with a solid kernel of truth and honesty, Houellebecq presents the waning of subjectivity by means of the social forces that help the process to continue. This can be ← 159 | 160 → detected in every place where knowledge is generated, as Daniel1’s young female friend says in The Possibility of an Island:33

  You know the magazine I work for: All we’re trying to do is create an artificial mankind, a frivolous one that will no longer be open to seriousness or to humor, which, until it dies, will engage in an increasingly desperate quest for fun and sex; a generation of definitive kids. We are going to succeed of course; and in that world, you [Daniel1] will no longer have your place. (Possibility, pp. 25–26)

  [«Tu connais le journal où je travaille: ce que nous essayons de créer c’est une humanité factice, frivole, qui ne sera plus jamais accessible au sérieux ni à l’humour, qui vivra jusqu’à sa mort dans une quête de plus en plus désespérée du fun et du sexe; une génération de kids définitifs. Nous allons y parvenir, bien sûr; et, dans ce monde-là, tu [Daniel1] n’auras plus ta place.» (Possibilité, p. 36)]

  The concept of the neohuman is a direct continuation of the situation described in this passage, of the destruction of the most basic human emotions. The neohuman is no longer a flattened, uniform, and conformist personality; he is a clone that has undergone a process of standardizing consciousness and his life is a series of facades, aimed to create only the effects of personality. The clones have no new experiences. They are cut off from literary and metaphorical experiences, living the life story of their predecessors. The clones are unable to do anything other than read and reread the writings of their ancient forbears. For the clones, the real is unbearable, precisely because it is real and contains superfluities, contradictions, deviations, and mistakes (and consequently, the possibility of a new and different future can occur only when Daniel25 leaves the isolated complex in which he resides and relives Daniel1’s life).34

  However, as was discussed above, the world of Daniel1, the present day western world, is also based on façades, effects, spectacles, and ← 160 | 161 → ready-made images performed by the subjects. This is a world in which gestures are disconnected from essence, not due to a disparity between essence and appearance, but because the essence apparently no longer exists. This is how Daniel1 in The Possibility of an Island describes the public’s perception of him, with an emphasis on his personality’s performance element: the protagonist
gives a human performance which the public consumes and identifies as authentic:

  My supposed humanism was, in reality, built on very thin foundations: a vague outburst against tobacconists, an allusion to the corpses of negro clandestines cast up on the Spanish coasts had been enough to give me a reputation as a lefty and a defender of human rights. Me, a lefty? I had occasionally been able to introduce a few, vaguely young, anti-globalization campaigners into my sketches, without giving them an immediately antipathetic role; I had occasionally indulged in a certain demagogy: I was, I repeat, a good professional. Besides, I looked like an Arab, which helps. (Possibility, pp. 15–16; emphasis in the original)

  [«Mon humanisme supposé reposait en réalité sur des bases bien minces: une vague saillie sur les buralistes, une allusion aux cadavres des clandestins nègres rejetés sur les côtes espagnoles avaient suffi à me valoir une réputation d’homme de gauche et de défenseur des droits de l’homme. Homme de gauche, moi? J’avais occasionnellement pu introduire dans mes sketches quelques altermondialistes, vaguement jeunes, sans leur donner de rôle immédiatement antipathique; j’avais occasionnellement pu céder à une certaine démagogie: j’étais, je le répète, un bon professionnel. Par ailleurs j’avais une tête d’Arabe, ce qui facilite.» (Possibilité, p. 23; emphasis in the original)]

  Pornography is also a façade of experience, an effect of reality (effet de réel), as McCann notes.35 Following McCann, we may thus conclude that pornography creates an effect of reality. I believe that Houellebecq employs pornography in order to emphasize that the possibilities of the period make it impossible to think about love – or any subject – in a unique fashion. In a certain sense, the post-human also creates subjects without a nucleus; instead, there are only images, simulacra.

  In one of the moments of reflection scattered throughout The Possibility of an Island, Daniel1, a comedian and the author’s alter ego, associates the post-human world with pornographic representation. If the pornographic, as Daniel1 argues, is merely unsentimental sex and a pleasant pastime, then it represents the embodiment of the tendency towards detaching the self from reality and embedding it into the surface of the image. In so doing, the text once again accords pornography a central ← 161 | 162 → place as a means of reinforcing the critical conceptual system offered by Houellebecq. As Houellebecq writes (the emphases are mine):

  For Esther, as for all the young girls of her generation, sexuality was just a pleasant pastime, driven by seduction and eroticism, which implied no particular sentimental commitment; undoubtedly love, like pity, according to Nietzsche, had never been anything but a fiction invented by the weak to make the strong feel guilty, to introduce limits to their natural freedom and ferocity. Women had been weak, in particular at the moment of giving birth, early on they had needed to live under the guardianship of a powerful protector, and to this end they had invented love, but now they had become strong, they were independent and free, and they had given up inspiring or indeed feeling a sentiment that no longer had any concrete justification. The centuries-old male project, perfectly expressed nowadays by pornographic films, that consisted of ridding sexuality of any emotional connotation in order to bring it back into the realm of pure entertainment had finally, in this generation, been accomplished. What I was feeling, these young people could not feel, nor even exactly understand […]. They had succeeded, after decades of conditioning and effort, they had finally succeeded in tearing from their hearts one of the oldest human feelings, and now it was done, what had been destroyed could no longer be put back together […] they had reached their goal: at no moment in their lives would they ever know love. They were free. (Possibility, p. 236)

  [«Pour Esther, comme pour toutes les jeunes filles de sa génération, la sexualité n’était qu’un divertissement plaisant, guidé par la séduction et l’érotisme, qui n’impliquait aucun engagement sentimental particulier; sans doute l’amour n’avait-il jamais été, comme la pitié selon Nietzsche, qu’une fiction inventée par les faibles pour culpabiliser les forts, pour introduire des limites à leur liberté et à leur férocité naturelles. Les femmes avaient été faibles, en particulier au moment de leurs couches, elles avaient eu besoin à leurs débuts de vivre sous la tutelle d’un protecteur puissant, et à cet effet elles avaient inventé l’amour, mais à présent elles étaient devenues fortes, elles étaient indépendantes et libres, et elles avaient renoncé à inspirer comme à éprouver un sentiment qui n’avait plus aucune justification concrète. Le projet millénaire masculin, parfaitement exprimé de nos jours par les films pornographiques, consistant à ôter à la sexualité toute connotation affective pour la ramener dans le champ du divertissement pur, avait enfin, dans cette génération, trouvé à s’accomplir. Ce que je ressentais, ces jeunes gens ne pouvaient ni le ressentir, ni même exactement le comprendre […]. Ils avaient réussi, après des décennies de conditionnement et d’efforts ils avaient finalement réussi à extirper de leur cœur un des plus vieux sentiments humains, et maintenant c’était fait, ce qui avait été détruit ne pourrait se reformer […], ils avaient atteint leur objectif à aucun moment de leur vie, ils ne connaîtraient l’amour. Ils étaient libres.» (Possibilité, pp. 333–334)]

  Houellebecq weaves pornography into his realistic-philosophical writing in order to shatter the distinction between modes of fantasy and realism, and in so doing destroys realistic representation along with the illusion of ← 162 | 163 → reality. He presents realism, the representation that tries to destroy its very own creation (in the words of Barthes), as historical and self-reflective, suited to a time of ideological instability and a challenging of norms.36 The questions that Houellebecq raises concern the concepts of ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’, the real and the imagined, and the general ability to distinguish between authenticity and its absence (and perhaps also the benefit of doing so). Houellebecq invites us to think about how identity is created and from where it originates, to what degree we can understand it and influence or control it. These questions are more ontological than epistemological; they are relevant to the dilemmas of humankind in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, liberalism, and modern consumer society; a world in which people knowingly enslave themselves to unprecedented monitoring; a society that consistently and deliberately rejects diversity. In Houellebecq’s works, pornography draws our attention to the instrumentalization of post-humans and the extent to which their desires, imagination, and consciousness are shaped by the disciplinary enforcement systems of their time. ← 163 | 164 →

  ← 164 | 165 →

  1 An exception is Houellebecq’s most recent novel, The Map and the Territory, which does not focus on relationships and love and, consequently, does not include sex scenes.

  2 John McCann, Michel Houellebecq: Author of Our Times (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), p. 60.

  3 Trans. by Raymonde Coudert (Paris: Ramsay, 1994).

  4 Murielle Lucie Clément, “Michel Houellebecq, Erotisme et Pornographie”, in Sabine van Wesemaal (ed.), Michel Houellebecq Etudes Réunies (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 99–116.

  5 According to Abigail Solomon-Godea, modernism’s ‘ready-made’ has become postmodernism’s ‘already made’, as quoted by Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (Routledge: London and New York, 2002), p. 89.

  6 Franc Schuerewegen, “Scénes de Cul”, in Sabine van Wesemael (ed.), Michel Houellebecq Etudes Réunies (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 91–98.

  7 Baggesgaard agrees that Houellebecq’s representation of sex is a collection of pornographic clichés. He claims that this is intended to enable an examination of the conditions for human sexuality in contemporary society, and he analyzes the images of the body in Houellebecq’s writing in comparison to nineteenth-century realism in order to bolster his conclusions. See Mads Anders Baggesgaard, “Le corps en vue – trois images du corps chez Michel Houellebecq”, in Murielle Lucie Clément and Sabine van Wesemael (eds.), Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi,
2007), pp. 241–252.

  8 Susan Sontag, “The Pornographic Imagination”, in idem, Styles of Radical Will (New York: Picador, 1969), pp. 35–73.

  9 Jack Bankowsky, “Pop Life”, in Jack Bankowsky, Alison M. Gingeras and Catherine Wood (eds.), Pop Life: Art in a Material World (London: Tate, 2009), p. 22.

  10 Olivier Bessard-Banquy, Sexe et Littérature Aujourd’hui (Paris: La Musardine, 2010). Bessard-Banquy chronicles the history of pornographic literature in France (focusing mainly on the twentieth century). He notes that distribution of this literature was at first completely forbidden, and then restricted to adults. Finally, in 1992, the restrictions were lifted. In recent decades, pornographic representation has not been limited to pure pornographic literature and pornographic paragraphs appear also in texts the titles of which do not indicate that they contain any such content. He associates this with the increasing openness and liberality of a society which permits everyone to express their desires, including the wish to become acquainted with all aspects of sexuality. See in particular p. 28.

  11 Ibid., p. 131 (my translation).

  12 Ibid., pp. 139–30 (my translation).

  13 John Updike, “90% Hateful”, Review of The Possibility of an Island, New Yorker, 22 May, 2006, available at