Utopian Yearnings, Dystopian Thoughts: Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles and the Problem of Scientific Communitarianism

Varsava, Jerry A.

doi:10.1353/lit.2005.0064

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One can fairly speculate that among Houellebecq ' s reasons for reiterating a transhumanist scenario quite similar to the one he had developed previously in Atomized was that many readers had erroneously understood the latter as a positive utopia (see e.g. Varsava 2005 ). Few readers will repeat this mistake with regard to Th e Possibility of an Island : the present and the future of the novel are, each in their own way, equally repugnant.…”

Section: A Gift One Cannot Rejectmentioning

confidence: 95%

Literature and sustainability

Squire

Jarvis

2015

Green Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Deep sustainability: ecopoetics, enjoyment and ecstatic hospitality-Kate Rigby 52 4 Recycling materials, recycling lives: cardboard publishers in Latin America-Lucy Bell 76 5 Sustainability after extinction: on last animals and future bison-Joshua Schuster 97 6 Th e twilight of the Anthropocene: sustaining literature-Claire Colebrook PART II: Reading sustainability 137 7 Collapse, resilience, stability and sustainability in Margaret Atwood ' s MaddAddam trilogy-Dana Phillips 8 'Th e shadow of the future made all the diff erence': sustainability in Kim Stanley Robinson ' s Science in the Capital trilogy-Chris Pak Contents vi Contents 9 Th e unsustainable aesthetics of sustainability: the sense of an ending in Jeanette Winterson ' s Th e Stone Gods-Adeline Johns-Putra 10 A modest proposal for a less natural lifestyle: the paradoxes of sustainability and Michel Houellebecq ' s Th e Possibility of an Island-Hannes Bergthaller 11 Jorie Graham ' s Sea Change : the poetics of sustainability and the politics of what we ' re sustaining-Matthew Griffi ths 12 Circles unrounded: sustainability, subject and necessity

show abstract

Section: A Gift One Cannot Rejectmentioning

confidence: 95%

Literature and sustainability

Squire

Jarvis

2015

Green Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Social forces rather than inner psychological properties explain human behavior in Houellebecq’s novels: “Like Zola, Houllebecq places his characters in certain social contexts and then portrays their reactions to various stimuli.” (Varsava, 2005: 153). This Comtean, behavioristic, and sociologizing perspective is not just Houellebecq’s own, as a writer, but is also conferred unto his characters in their interpersonal understandings that make them resemble the calculating, role-playing actors described in Goffman’s sociology, for example.…”

Section: Houellebecq’s Postmodern Confessionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Character, Personality, and Identity: On Historical Aspects of Human Subjectivity

Brinkmann¹

2010

Nordic Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

From a hermeneutic viewpoint, human beings are self-interpreting creatures. History involves a development of the interpretive resources that humans have available for understanding themselves. Building on Charles Taylor's interpretive approach to human subjectivity, this article attempts to outline some significant changes in such interpretive resources. It is argued that different forms of subjectivity go hand in hand with changing modes of self-interpretation: From a premodern notion of character, through a modern notion of personality, to a postmodern idea of identity. In a culture of character, people primarily interpret themselves according to a moral and religious perspective; in a culture of personality, a psychological (scientific as well as romantic) perspective becomes prominent, stressing individual personality and its development; and, in a contemporary culture of identity, more fluid self-interpretations centred on a consumerist perspective gain in importance.

show abstract

“…The "forces" alluded to here are Comtean laws of "social physics," governing human lives under conditions of advanced consumer capitalism (Varsava, 2005). So although Houellebecq is lyrical, he is willing to appeal to social science constructs such as social forces.…”

Section: Houellebecq's Lyrical Sociologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Literature as Qualitative Inquiry

Brinkmann

2009

Qualitative Inquiry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent years, there has been a literary turn in parts of the social sciences. Attention has been given to social science writings as literature. In this article, the author approaches the issue from the opposite direction by engaging with literature as qualitative social inquiry. He does so through a reading of the French novelist Michel Houellebecq. Houellebecq’s style represents a form of “lyrical sociology,” depicting human experience in a consumer society. The author argues that we can learn as much from Houellebecq about contemporary human lives, experiences, and sufferings as we can from traditional forms of empirical qualitative research. He concludes with a more general proposal of how to think about fact and fiction in social science writings.

show abstract

Utopian Yearnings, Dystopian Thoughts: Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles and the Problem of Scientific Communitarianism

Cited by 9 publications

References 5 publications

Literature and sustainability

Literature and sustainability

Character, Personality, and Identity: On Historical Aspects of Human Subjectivity

Literature as Qualitative Inquiry

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About