Ostrvo dana sutrašnjeg: književna fikcija kao kulturna kritika
The Island of the Day After

Author(s): Gordana Gorunović
Subject(s): Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Srpski genealoški centar
Keywords: Michel Houellebecq; postmodern literature; anti-utopia; satire; cultural critique
Summary/Abstract: "The Possibility of an Island", novel by contemporary French writer Michel Houellebecq, might not be science fiction literature in terms of genre, but it definitely uses this genre’s experiences when it comes to problematizing 21st Century future. Houellebecq’s satirical fiction about the end of Millennium and apocalypse, adds in a certain way to Western tradition of anti-utopian literature. In my opinion, its literary contemporaneity and cultural, anthropological and philosophical provocativeness (relevancy?) reflect in the fact that author maps and reconsiders main issues and current problems which Western civilization societies face in postmodern times: domination of consumerism and obsession with the bodily, the cult of youth and beauty, pornographized eroticism, sexual tourism, genetic engineering and possibility of cloning, media virtualization of reality, flourishing of new pseudo-religious cults (New Age sects), etc.

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