ABSTRACT

This article emerges from exhausted readings of controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq’s notorious portrayals of sex and sexuality to observe the relationship between the monstrous, the sexual, and extinction. Rather than dwell on what I call the “Houellebecq, pornographer” trope (that there are either too many, or too graphic, or too obscene depictions of sex in his novels), this article will observe Houellebecq’s troubling of what sex might in fact be. This requires asking exactly what is meant, in terms of demonstration, by “sex” – especially in the literary setting of a novel, which, compared with the explicit potential different media have given to twenty-first century iterations of sexuality, is relatively tame. In doing so, I will ask exactly what is explicit about sexuality, especially considering its technical changes throughout modernity. I suggest that Houellebecq’s attention to the depiction or de-monstration of sex, in all of its “monstrous” guises, comments on late-capitalist decadence and its extinctive trajectories – offering an ironic template from which to reconsider them.

摘要

这篇文章源于对有争议的法国小说家米歇尔·维勒贝克（Michel Houellebecq）臭名昭著的性和性行为的详尽解读，以观察怪物、性和灭绝之间的关系。与其纠缠于我所说的“维勒贝克，色情作家”的比喻（他的小说中对性的描述要么太多，要么过于生动，要么过于淫秽），本文将观察维勒贝克对性实际上可能是什么的困扰. 这需要问清楚，就示范而言，“性”是什么意思——尤其是在小说的文学背景中，与不同媒体赋予 21 世纪性迭代的明确潜力相比，它相对温和. 在这样做的时候，我会问到底什么是明确的性行为，特别是考虑到它在整个现代性中的技术变化。我建议，维勒贝克关注对性的描绘或展示，在其所有“可怕的”伪装下，对晚期资本主义颓废及其灭绝轨迹的评论——提供了一个讽刺的模板，可以从中重新考虑它们。