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[accessed 3–6–2011].
14 Sabine van Wesemael, “Le Freudisme de Michel Houellebecq. Extension du Domaine de la Lutte, une Histoire de Maladie”, in Sabine van Wesemael (ed.), Michel Houellebecq Etudes Réunies (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 117–126.
15 Booker analyzes the appearance of sexual images in the second half of the twentieth century in the context of Jungian psychology. He maintains that when the ego takes over the representation of the self, images of sexual activity in its most functional, crude and perverted form appear. This is explained by the disconnection between the ego and the deep archetypal framework of the self by which human beings are linked to the deeper elements of their mind, giving them a sense of connection, belonging, meaning and purpose. When awareness is limited exclusively to the ego, the physical aspects of human love undergo a process of radicalization and crude, functional images of sexuality multiply. See Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots: Why we Tell Stories (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), pp. 455–494.
16 Morrey correctly remarks that “Houellebecq’s discourse on sex […] is at heart a discourse on humanity”. See Douglas Morrey, Michel Houellebecq: Humanity and its Aftermath (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), p. 11.
17 Elinor Fuchs, The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theatre after Modernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996).
18 In a society in which sexual liberalism or unlimited possibilities do not exist – that is, one that does not function according to supermarket logic – everyone can find happiness since they are able to perceive matters on a deeper level.
19 Donna Haraway. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in Late Twentieth Century”, in idem, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 149–181.
20 However, even the illusion of choice has enormous social significance, according to Friedman. See Friedman, Lawrence. The Horizontal Society. New Haven Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 240.
21 Slavoj Žižek, Matrix: The Big Other and Virtual Reality, trans. by Yair Or (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2003), p. 12 [Hebrew].
22 Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Society of Control”, Theory and Criticism 24 (2004): pp. 235–240 [Hebrew].
23 Kathryn Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature (New York and London: Methuen, 1984).
24 Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, p. 90.
25 This distinguishes the parody from the pastiche; whereas the pastiche is an empty, a-historical and nostalgic signifier in its approach to the past, the parody is ironic and critical, even in its approach to past styles. See ibid., p. 94.
26 Ibid., p. 91.
27 Hutcheon notes that her definition of postmodernist parody clashes with the accepted reading of this device. It is usually claimed that postmodernism quotes past styles in a devalued, decorative, de-historic manner, ignoring the context of artistic production and turning its back on conceptual forms. This relies on the claim that this cultural mode is most suited to contemporary culture.
28 It is further notable that according to Hutcheon’s classification, both erotic and parodic literatures belong to the narcissistic genres, i.e. self-conscious meta-fiction. See Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (New York and London: Methuen, 1984).
29 It is interesting to note that in the cinematic adaptation of the novel Extension du Domaine de la Lutte (1999), director Philip Harel employs an analogical cinematic device, incorporating a continuous full-screen clip from an authentic pornographic movie. The faces of the actors are completely absent from the clip, with the focus entirely on the contact between their genitals.
30 The number of inhabitants is different in the French and English versions.
31 In The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq writes in the name of his protagonist Michel Djerzinski, who lays the foundations for the ability to clone human beings in the future, “Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil” (p. 251) [«L’amour lie, et il lie à jamais. La pratique du bien est une liaison, la pratique du mal une déliaison. La séparation est l’autre nom du mal.» p. 302].
32 McCann, Michel Houellebecq: Author of Our Times, pp. 5–9.
33 Ibid., pp. 25–26.
34 On this matter, see a comparison between vacation sites designated for the western tourist as described in Houellebecq’s novella Lanzarote and the novel Platform, and the closed, secured territory of the neohumans in The Possibility of an Island. The absolute autonomy of the neohumans in their closed environment is, in fact, the quintessential technological realization of the tourist’s uninvolved position. The tourist fantasy provides total freedom for the individual, disconnected from others and from any national, territorial, or cultural sense of belonging. This is the living environment of the neohuman, cut off and separated from the world. See Maud Granger Remy, “Le tourisme est un posthumanisme. Autour de Plateforme”, in Murielle Lucie Clément and Sabine van Wesemael (eds.), Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 277–286.
35 McCann, John Michel Houellebecq: Author of Our Times, pp. 177–183.
36 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth Century Art Forms (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000 [1985]), p. 82.
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