Michel Houellebecq and the Literature of Despair

Widely acknowledged as an important, if highly controversial, figure in contemporary literature, French novelist and poet Michel Houellebecq has elicited diverse critical responses.

In this book Carole Sweeney examines his novels as a response to the advance of neoliberalism into all areas of affective human life. This historicizing study argues that le monde houellebecquien is an 'atomised society' of banal quotidian alienation populated by quietly resentful men who are the botched subjects of late-capitalism. Addressing Houellebecq's handling of the 'failure' of the radical thought of '68, Sweeney looks at the ways in which his fiction treats feminism, the decline of religion and the family, as well as
the obsolescence of French 'theory' and the Sartrean notion of 'engaged' literature.

Reading the world with the disappointed idealism of a contemporary moralist, Houellebecq's novels, Sweeney argues, fluctuate between despair for the world as it is and a limp utopian hope for a post-humanity.

“Sweeney's book is a painstakingly researched and carefully written study of Houellebecq's novels. It will provide students and scholars with a very thorough contextual understanding of the cultural origins of Houellebecq's ideas and with a bracing and persuasively argued critique of his various ideological positions.” —Douglas Morrey, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Warwick, UK

“Writing clearly, and often sharply, Sweeney deftly situates her subject in France’s ever-changing intellectual and political climate. Her study will interest literary and gender scholars, sociologists of knowledge, and historians; perhaps it should be required reading by economists and business leaders who have embraced American-style capitalism and its implicit claims to liberation.” -Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature