Wine in Houellebecq: Cultural transgression or literary device?

Dutton, Jacqueline

doi:10.1177/0957155819893586

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Literary studies have considered the presence of wine in literature in various national contexts (Anderson, 2018;Bruera, 2013;Del Puppo, 2016;Mayer-Robin, 2008). Cultural studies yield critical readings of wine-related phenomena in ways which are familiar to cultural sociologists (Cappeliez, 2017;Dutton, 2020), while media studies concern the representation of wine across multiple media (Schirmer, 2014;Smith Maguire, 2019a;Smith Maguire and Lim, 2015). Linguistics and other disciplines concerned with language offer analyses of how wine vocabulary operates (Langlois et al, 2011;Lehrer, 1975;Lindstrom, 1975;Tiefenbacher and Townsend, 2019), phenomena which sociologists would want to connect more thoroughly to issues of social power and inequalities (Inglis, 2019a).…”

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confidence: 99%

Introduction to the Sociology of Wine—The Sociological Decanter: Pouring Sociology into Wine, and Vice Versa

Inglis

Almila

2022

Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change

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Wine from grapes is both ancient and highly modern, increasingly widespread across vast swathes of the planet, and made, marketed and distributed by a huge industry that directly and indirectly employs millions of people and generates huge profits, at least for some. Yet despite wine's social and cultural importance, sociology and sociologists have remained remarkably quiet about wine, unlike those in other academic disciplines. There is today no such thing as a scholarly field called the sociology of wine. This introductory paper to the special issue on wine and sociology considers this state of affairs, and what might be done about overcoming the relative silence of sociology on wine matters. It offers an extensive literature review covering what international sociological work there is on the wine/sociology interface, considering this relatively modest body of literature in relation to the more voluminous amounts of wine-related analysis offered by anthropologists, geographers, economists, and others. These scholarly domains are represented in the paper by reference to classic works and indicative readings. The paper poses a series of questions as to what a sociological field of wine analysis could look like, and what it would take to build such a thing. It also illustrates how the papers published in the special issue contribute to posing and answering some of these questions.

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confidence: 99%

Introduction to the Sociology of Wine—The Sociological Decanter: Pouring Sociology into Wine, and Vice Versa

Inglis

Almila

2022

Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change

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“…In the rare moments of satisfaction with life, the protagonists discover their love for traditional national cuisine. Apart from the already mentioned French specialities, Houellebecq lists some "regional products (livarot, cider, apple juice, andouille)" (Houellebecq 2019: 182) purchased by Florent-Claude during his trip to Normandy, as well as excellent French winesdom pérignon, ruinart, chablis, châteauneuf-du-pape or saint-estèphe -consumed at different occasions by the characters from Whatever, Serotonin, The Map and the Territory, Submission and Platform (see : Dutton 2020). The love for national dishes is also clearly visible in François's excitement as he sees "butcher shops, cheese shops recommended by Petitrenaud and Pudlowski" in the 5th arrondissement of Paris (Houellebecq 2015: 231).…”

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confidence: 99%

Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny

Kilk

2020

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The descriptions of characters' eating habits recurring in Michel Houellebecq's novels make a complex system of signs functioning at the textual and intertextual level as well as in reference to the extratextual reality, i.e., the situation of the Western society at the turn of the 21st century. The aim of this article is to identify the key points of this system and determine the possible directions of interpretation of these culinary motifs. For contemporary decadents from Houellebecq's novels, lone feasts are a new kind of ritual, which -unlike the traditional "ceremonies of eating" -does not help maintain interpersonal relationships but only provides temporary relief and helps them forget about problems.

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The Vertigos of Coining: ‘Michel Houellebecq’, Or, What Names Remain(s)?

Dutton¹

2021

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Writing remains. One could argue that it is precisely because of this uncanny and unpredictable survival that inscription holds an inextricable influence on culture. Deconstructive theory posits this as the ‘biodegradability’ of writing — that culture consumes writing's intended meaning, employing it as fuel for its own survival. In this article, I argue for Michel Houellebecq's awareness of this survival, suggesting that his texts stage their — and their author's — own biodegradability to interweave truth and fiction. Particularly, he utilizes the ‘untranslatability’ of the proper name — its brief resistance to cultural biodegradability — to intercept and write into the future(s) inscription is tied to. This draws attention to the vital paradox of proper names, and suggests that their untranslatability forces every reader to conjure different, contradicting and often ‘out-of-sync’ histories. Houellebecq's names, which necessitate an interminable coining, gesture to the inevitable (re)translation of finitude.

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Wine in Houellebecq: Cultural transgression or literary device?

Cited by 3 publications

References 10 publications

Introduction to the Sociology of Wine—The Sociological Decanter: Pouring Sociology into Wine, and Vice Versa

Introduction to the Sociology of Wine—The Sociological Decanter: Pouring Sociology into Wine, and Vice Versa

Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny

The Vertigos of Coining: ‘Michel Houellebecq’, Or, What Names Remain(s)?

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