Citation

Roberts D. Thesis Eleven 2017; 142(1): 44-55.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0725513617727896

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Houellebecq's critical reading of Huxley's Brave New World in his novel Atomised takes Canetti's novel Auto da Fe as its template. Houellebecq takes from Canetti the structuring contrast of antithetical brothers and shares his diagnosis of the crisis of Western individualism. Both writers identify the sickness at the heart of Western civilization that presages its coming end as the egotism of the monadic individual, enclosed in a private world of fears and desires. The role of the crowd in Canetti's novel as the Other of the fallen world of self-interest is taken in Houellebecq by the posthuman vision of social unity beyond division realized through cloning. © 2017 Thesis Eleven Pty, Ltd., SAGE Publications.

Language: en

Keywords

clones; elementary particles; posthuman being; the crowd