The Houellebecq Cure: All Malady Will End in the Neohuman
The Houellebecq Cure: All Malady Will End in the Neohuman

Summary/Abstract: Michel Houellebecq’s novels evoke a contemporary society obsessed with dying. Most of its behaviour is determined by this constant dread. Houellebecq often alludes to three principal human enterprises designed to escape this predicament: hedonism, love, and scientific knowledge, all of which are founded on denial. This article explores the distinct relationship that these worldviews possess with the awareness of death. It will focus extensively on the scientific worldview through the futuristic neohuman community described by Atomised and The Possibility of an Island. The neohuman is seen to be science’s success in creating a being that does not grow old and die. I will argue, however, that this achievement is limited to the physical aspect of death. The neohuman ultimately still finds itself suffering from an awareness of death. Like the other two worldviews, science here also fails to solve the existential experience of senescence. For Houellebecq, science is conceived as leading one towards, rather than away from, the malady it was designed to cure.

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