Abstract
This paper investigates the physical and metaphorical meanings of nausea in Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island. Through the trope of cloning, Houellebecq likens the human body to a ship, and conflates existential nausea with nausea caused by inhabiting a body. The future clones of the narrator Daniel inhabit a world of ‘neohumans’ that are clones like themselves, and old-style, barbaric humans. Neohumans change their bodies through cloning, which after a while give them ship-sickness, or nausea. Daniel’s nausea is shaped by his relationship with the Mediterranean throughout. The novel asks the question ‘What happens to human consciousness when the body keeps changing and the white male body is propagated into the future?’ Thus, the novel works as an allegory for the way the Mediterranean functions today both as a curative and lethal space for European endeavor.
Highlights
The word nausea comes from the Greek naus, the word for ship, and refers, literally, to ship-sickness
This paper aims to follow nausea as a metaphor in Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility of an Island, a title that suggests a movement towards an island that will put an end to this sea and/or ship-sickness
In The Possibility of an Island, Houellebecq imagines a means of appeasement, a coming to terms with the human body: a perpetual cloning which should reduce the effects of ageing, an ageing Houellebecq’s narrators experience as a nauseous betrayal
Summary
The word nausea comes from the Greek naus, the word for ship, and refers, literally, to ship-sickness. In The Possibility of an Island, Houellebecq imagines a means of appeasement, a coming to terms with the human body: a perpetual cloning which should reduce the effects of ageing, an ageing Houellebecq’s narrators experience as a nauseous betrayal. In this exploration of nausea, I will use Jean Paul Sartre’s approach to the term, and couple it with Julie Kristeva’s concept of the abject to make sense of the role it plays in Houellebecq’s writing, acknowledging that he is an author obsessed with origins and genealogy.
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