The Houellebecq Cure. All Malady Will End in the Neohuman

Abstract

Michel Houellebecq’s characters frequently suffer from an obsessive thought of death: an insufferable torment undergone especially by ageing individuals. The genetically modified human clone, the neohuman, and his regime, are especially designed to at once eradicate this obsession through immortality and apprehend it through intellectual and scientific lucidity. Paradoxically however, it is seen to return and disrupt also this existential state. Focusing on Maurice Blanchot’s question of the secret, ‘The Houellebecq Cure’ seeks to more closely define this obsession that is pivotal to Houellebecq’s tragic scenarios. Moreover, it traces out the significant interaction between the thought and the “irrational” drives of love and carnality. In this light, it argues that the failure of the neohuman predicament hinges on a suppression of these drives. Its impassive detachment is seen to be similar to the existential state of the ageing human. What this points to is ultimately the futility of all efforts of subjectivity at mastering an anguish that comes from what is exterior to it; an anguish that, in truth, constitutes it.