Ghosts in the text: Writing technologies, authorial strategy and the politics of reactionary autoimmunity in Houellebecq's works

In the last decade of his life, Jacques Derrida articulated "autoimmunity" as the safeguarding mechanism with which an entity believing it has been infiltrated with a threatening "other" reacts against itself. Using Derrida's analysis of politically reactionary forms of auto...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAustralian journal of French studies Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 53 - 69
Main Author Grass, Delphine
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Liverpool Liverpool University Press 01.04.2019
Subjects
Autoimmunity
Derrida, Jacques
Fiction
French literature
Houellebecq, Michel (1956- )
Metaphor
Neoliberalism
Politics
Technique
Themes, motives
Writers
Writing
France
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Summary:In the last decade of his life, Jacques Derrida articulated "autoimmunity" as the safeguarding mechanism with which an entity believing it has been infiltrated with a threatening "other" reacts against itself. Using Derrida's analysis of politically reactionary forms of autoimmunity, this essay analyses how Houellebecq's most recent extra-textual reactionary provocations are embedded in the techno-scientific and posthuman vision of his early fictions. Extending Derrida's metaphor of autoimmunity to Houellebecq's literary and authorial strategies, I argue that Houellebecq's willingness to destroy the very channels of his literary and extra-textual provocations is rooted in the extension of neoliberalism to the private and biological spheres of life described in his fictions.
Bibliography:AustJFrenchSt.jpg
Australian Journal of French Studies, Vol. 56, No. 1, Apr 2019: [53]-69
ISSN:0004-9468
2046-2913
DOI:10.3828/AJFS.2019.05