Notes on Michel Houellebecq and The Elementary Particles

First impression:

He has observed keenly the malaise of contemporary society, and writes the story patiently and sharply. His unfathomable frankness and courage to confront the engulfing predicament of modern man is unprecedented in the art of novel. He has extended the boundary of novel writing to the forefront of biological philosophy, and touched the hardcore of the real problem a modern man is facing.

Philosophical Ponderings:

Metaphysical mutations, in Houellebecq’s words, are the global transformations in the values to which the majority subscribes, and they are currently ongoing. One of the characters of such mutations is that philosophy is no longer considered being of practical significance, ‘an age that men live out their lonely, bitter lives, and feelings such as love, tenderness and human fellowship had, for the most part, disappeared'. He describes this as the third turn of western civilization, in par with the emergence of the Christianity and the dawn of modern science.

The logic of such a third mutation is represented through the story of twin brothers – Michel and Bruno. If there are some words to describe the character of these two brothers, we might say Michel is an extreme rationalist, who believes in scientific certainty, while Bruno an ultra sensationalist, who only finds solace in sexual pleasures. Both characters are searching for the solutions to their own problems, but only Michel reaches his goal by accepting his own metaphysical mutations, at the expenses of his love and life. The central idea however is conveyed through by prologue and epilogue.

It has been largely agreed that something radically different would happen in our history with the development of genetic engineering, but nobody has presented a clear paradigm for an individual to localize properly in such a shift. In the fictional world of Houellebecq, Michel’s proposal at the end of his life to this problem is: mankind must disappear and give way to a new species which is asexual and immortal, a species which has outgrown individuality, separation and evolution.

Asexual reproduction with the help of genetic engineering might be realized soon, so this problem is actually not a worthless fantasy, rather it is urgent. It’s understandable also that such asexual reproduction is discordant with the religious doctrine of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, because it undermines ‘human dignity in its unique relationship with the Creator’. ‘Only Buddhists demurred, noting that all of the Buddha’s teachings were founded on the awareness of the three impediments of old age, sickness and death, and the Enlightened One, if he had meditated on it, would not necessarily have rejected a technical solution.’ (p258)

Sex, de-sublimation, spiritual struggle, endless chase of pleasures, love, desire, banality of life, and problems thus caused, when all these elements are woven into a novel and widely acclaimed, it surely will catch the attention of Zizek. His critique titled ‘No sex, please, we’re post-human’ is a typical Zizekian one - sharp, brusque and majestically rational, but is it too dry to go such an extreme reasoning, which has been portrayed sympathetically by Houellebecq in his depiction of Michel?

I’m more and more convinced that such a critique doesn’t work, although I was once an avid follower of Zizek. Something is missing in such an analytical certainty, which will alienate readers further. Hedonistic Bruno and rational Michel, they are the parts within one subject. They should not be treated as a separate individual, but the split from within.

3 Categories of Man

The idea Houellebecq tries to convey through the character of Bruno seems to be that confusion the passion for life with the endless sexual gratification would definitely leads you to the state of sadness, depression and mania. This actually is the fallacy that man is prone to be trapped. Interestingly, Houellebecq seems to blame an individual’s downfall to a consumerism driven society, especially the mass consumption of sexual pleasures, initially started in States and swept France and other European society in 1960s.

He categorizes individuals into three kinds, namely, the symptomatic who leads uncomplicated live in the mainstream of society and remains at ease as long as they are in part of it; the precursor, who are ‘well adapted to their time and way of life on the one hand’, and ‘anxious, to surpass them by adopting news customs, or proselytizing ideas still regarded as marginal’ on the other; and the last one – the revolutionary and prophet, who has the power to break down social norm and impose a new direction on events. (p20)

What if these three states are lived through by one person? It seems that Houellebecq is approaching to the status of a prophet, if not a revolutionary.

There are some keen observations regarding how a man would be influenced or symptomized by sex that I couldn’t imagine anything nicer than “having clitorises all over your body.” Houellebecq’s remark immediately reminds me of an anecdote of a monk on the way to the spiritual elevation. In his meditation, he is constantly bothered by an image that he’s surrounded by countless clitorises yearning to be satisfied. He has tried many ways to eliminate such an illusion, but all are in vain. After several days, he suddenly has a solution.

When the time that image appears again, he imagines himself becoming countless erected penises, penetrating clitorises one-by-one in his mind, satisfying their needs. After a while, everything is gone, and he thus enters a state of tranquility. Since then, the image of clitorises stops appearing in his meditation.

A very rewarding reading experience indeed. It's a pity that it's still not translated into Chinese.