Particules Flottantes : Mutable Identity and Postmodern "Schizophrenia" in the Works of Michel Houellebecq

Abstract

Abstract: Michel Houellebecq's representations of selfhood, both in his theoretical works and literary oeuvre, depict the self as unstable, decentered or fluid, evoking postmodern theory about the dissociative nature of the self. In his essay "Approaches to Distress" (1997), he posits the notion of the "mutable self," and, for the unmoored protagonists of his novels, self-identity becomes increasingly fractured and fluid as they are engulfed by what the author terms "the market society." Herein, the individual is enjoined to adapt and change (in consonance with market forces, consumer tastes, social trends) while fixed values and identities are swept away by the mutability of capitalism. In his representations of selfhood, Houellebecq evokes the theories of Baudrillard and Jameson concerning postmodern schizophrenia, the latter eschewing clinical definitions of the term to offer a diagnosis of the subject's fractured psychical apparatus and loss of subjectivity in postmodernity.