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Networks of Good and Evil: Michel Houellebecq’s Fictional Infrastructures

Duffy, Larry (2012) Networks of Good and Evil: Michel Houellebecq’s Fictional Infrastructures. Australian Journal of French Studies, 49 (3). pp. 211-225. ISSN 0004-9468. (doi:10.3828/AJFS.2012.17) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:30312)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2012.17

Abstract

A striking feature of Michel Houellebecq's fiction is the pervasive presence of infrastructure, whether consisting of nineteenth-century transport and administrative networks underpinning a national territory, or modern-day electronic networks underpinning those of distribution and exchange in a liberal economy. The former are presented in a largely positive light, and are depicted as creating bonds which connect a cohesive community; the latter, despite their overwhelming presence in all areas of social life, succeed only in disconnecting human beings. The network is thus for Houellebecq a means of establishing the ideological problematics of his work, which critiques the demise of community based on shared moral values, and the rise of an amoral individualism. It represents also a thematic link with other infrastructural networks: those of nineteenth-century fiction. In deconstructing the networks underpinning modern activity, and demonstrating their functioning - and collapse into dysfunction - Houellebecq constructs, like his naturalist predecessors, an epistemological infrastructure of the contemporary world.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.3828/AJFS.2012.17
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PQ Romance Literature > PQ1 French Literature
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Fiona Symes
Date Deposited: 28 Aug 2012 15:40 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:08 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/30312 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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