Du héros à la victime : l’apocalypse selon Michel Houellebecq

• Authors: Katarzyna Thiel-Jańczuk

Title variants

EN

From the hero to the victim: apocalypse according to Michel Houellebecq

PL

Du héros à la victime : l’apocalypse selon Michel Houellebecq

• Languages of publication: FR

Abstracts

EN

The paper proposes an interpretation of Michel Houellebecq’s work in the perspective of heroism and victimization, two fundamental, according to J.-M. Apostolidès, categories of the western civilization. Referring those categories to Houellebecq’s discussion with contemporary individualism and its crisis, announced by the French intellectualists and called penseurs’68 by L. Ferry and A. Renaut, the author of the paper shows the presence of post-heroic utopias which are manifestations of humanism reduced to individual and trivial happiness in Houellebecq’s work. In this context, Houellebecq’s work appears to be a form of resistance against the fall of the great heroic tradition. Heroism and victimization enable to associate Houellebecq’s work with the predicament of the retour du sujet (return of the subject) through an ethic of the sacrifice as well as a game with Roland Barthes’ concept of the death of the author.

PL

The paper proposes an interpretation of Michel Houellebecq’s work in the perspective of heroism and victimization, two fundamental, according to J.-M. Apostolidès, categories of the western civilization. Referring those categories to Houellebecq’s discussion with contemporary individualism and its crisis, announced by the French intellectualists and called penseurs’68 by L. Ferry and A. Renaut, the author of the paper shows the presence of post-heroic utopias which are manifestations of humanism reduced to individual and trivial happiness in Houellebecq’s work. In this context, Houellebecq’s work appears to be a form of resistance against the fall of the great heroic tradition. Heroism and victimization enable to associate Houellebecq’s work with the predicament of the retour du sujet (return of the subject) through an ethic of the sacrifice as well as a game with Roland Barthes’ concept of the death of the author.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Gdański
• Journal: Cahiers ERTA
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 109-123

Dates

published

2013-09-01

Contributors

author

Katarzyna Thiel-Jańczuk