Michel Houellebecq's pre-1968 nostalgia and imagined futures

Abstract

The novels of Michel Houellebecq criticise the individualistic and consumerist nature of developed society, while remembering a time when communism was still taken seriously, the family unit was intact, women were nurturing and "natural", and religion played a moralising role. Nostalgia for a golden past, and contempt for the present, shape the imagined futures in four of Houellebecq's novels. This article examines this nostalgia for pre-1968, and how its rose-tinted memory and the perceived damage of the revolution's legacy influence i Iouellebecq's futures, wherein he first moves humanity further away from the idealised past in <i>Les Particules elementaires</i> and <i>La Possibiliti d'une</i> lie before attempting a return to those values in <i>La Carte et le territoire</i> and <i>Soumission</i>.