Book contents
- Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond
- Classics after Antiquity
- Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Figures of Discord
- Chapter 2 Oriental Empire
- Chapter 3 Empire without End
- Chapter 4 The Eternal City
- Chapter 5 The Republic to Come
- Chapter 6 The Empire to Come
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - The Empire to Come
Houellebecq, Soumission
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2022
- Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond
- Classics after Antiquity
- Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Figures of Discord
- Chapter 2 Oriental Empire
- Chapter 3 Empire without End
- Chapter 4 The Eternal City
- Chapter 5 The Republic to Come
- Chapter 6 The Empire to Come
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Alone among texts analyzed, Soumission describes no battlefields. Civil war diffuses into street violence. The electoral crisis, in which the Muslim Brotherhood prevents the National Front from coming to power, is handled behind the scenes. The Roman tradition’s tropes, however, frame France’s social dysfunction as raging civil war: a republic fails and an oriental empire modeled on ancient Rome takes its place. Allusion – streets in Paris, squares encoding Roman institutions, towns commemorating Crusade battles – retells France’s dystopian future as a rerun of history since Augustus imposed peace through empire. The novel’s protagonist faces a personal crisis as he relives the life of his research interest, Huysmans: the paradigm of decadence converted to Catholicism. His perverse conversion, however, exposes the present refoundation as a return to a decadent political theology. Soumission’s Muslims, all nativist converts who establish a Nietzschean empire of domination, aim above all to subject women. Once again, orientalism projects onto an apparently foreign other the abjection residing within the self. The novel’s poetics accuse us of hypocrisy if we think we are any better.
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- Civil War and the Collapse of the Social BondThe Roman Tradition at the Heart of the Modern, pp. 256 - 325Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022