ABSTRACT

Sérotonine (2019) is Michel Houellebecq’s most overtly politically engaged novel to date: the novel’s content and the framing strategies that Houellebecq employed at the time of its publication converge to encourage readers to interpret the views expressed therein as Houellebecq’s own. This holds particularly true in relation to the apparently genuine concern that Sérotonine exudes for the regions of France that geographer Christophe Guilluy labels ‘la France périphérique’. Reading Houellebecq’s novel alongside the work of Guilluy, for whom Houellebecq has expressed respect, also helps to explain the surprising absence of protagonists who express racist views against French citizens of postcolonial immigrant descent, or depictions of race-related conflict, from Sérotonine. That absence does not imply a corresponding absence of racism. Rather, excluding non-white French populations from his narrative allows Houellebecq to echo Guilluy by implicitly excluding them from both the marginalized communities for which his novel expresses such concern and, more broadly, the category of ‘French’.

摘要

Sérotonine (2019) 是 Michel Houellebecq 迄今为止最公开的政治参与小说：小说的内容和 Houellebecq 在出版时采用的框架策略相结合，以鼓励读者将其中表达的观点解释为 Houellebecq 自己的观点。对于Sérotonine对法国地区的明显真正的关注，地理学家 Christophe Guilluy 将其称为“la France périphérique”，这一点尤其如此。阅读 Houellebecq 的小说以及 Guilluy 的作品，Houellebecq 对他表示敬意，这也有助于解释为什么主角没有对后殖民移民后裔的法国公民表达种族主义观点，或者Sérotonine 中与种族相关的冲突的描述. 没有这种情况并不意味着相应地没有种族主义。相反，将非白人法国人口排除在他的叙述之外，让 Houellebecq 与 Guilluy 相呼应，通过含蓄地将他们排除在他的小说表达这种关注的边缘化社区之外，更广泛地说，排除了“法国人”的范畴。