An ode to Schopenhauer by one of France's most famous living authors.

Sors de l'enfance, ami, réveille-toi ! -- Le monde est ma représentation -- Porte un regard attentif sur les choses -- Ainsi s'objective le vouloir-vivre -- Le théâtre du monde -- Conduite de la vie : ce que nous sommes -- La conduite de la vie : ce que l'on a.

Michel Houellebecq has, I argue, changed significantly his portrayal of Islam: in earlier novels, he advances a hostile view of it premised on the secularist belief in the death of God and the inexorable decline of monotheism. Houellebecq sets capitalism against Islam, and advances a vision of a godless ‘religion positive’ better suited for capitalist modernity. In contrast, in his last novel and interventions, Houellebecq makes a post-secular turn largely driven by the radicalization of positivist ideas relying (...) on evolutionary biology. This turn is opposed to modernity and favourable to a reconsideration of Islam as the religion of submission and a remedy to personal crisis and Europe’s decline. I show that, evaluative differences notwithstanding, Houellebecq’s stereotyping of Islam has remained constant in his literary work. (shrink)

The present paper tries to tackle the philosophical, ethical and social problem of posthumanism through an analysis of Michel Houellebecq´s novel The possibility of an island. We will defend that, when dealing with future and uncertain phenomena like posthumanism, literatura constituyes an extremely adequate tool. Through Houellebecq´s novel, we will reflect on posthumanist issues as body and immortality, the problem of the Other and human – posthuman relationships, as well as the peril of posthuman life turning out senseless (...) and empty. We will conclude that literatura, and The possibility of an island concretely, allows us to better understand and, therefore, better discuss and decide upon the important problems posthumanism puts forward. (shrink)

Writing remains. One could argue that it is precisely because of this uncanny and unpredictable survival that inscription holds an inextricable influence on culture. Deconstructive theory posits this as the ‘biodegradability’ of writing — that culture consumes writing's intended meaning, employing it as fuel for its own survival. In this article, I argue for Michel Houellebecq's awareness of this survival, suggesting that his texts stage their — and their author's — own biodegradability to interweave truth and fiction. Particularly, he (...) utilizes the ‘untranslatability’ of the proper name — its brief resistance to cultural biodegradability — to intercept and write into the future inscription is tied to. This draws attention to the vital paradox of proper names, and suggests that their untranslatability forces every reader to conjure different, contradicting and often ‘out-of-sync’ histories. Houellebecq's names, which necessitate an interminable coining, gesture to the inevitable translation of finitude. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Michel Houellebecq’s Anéantir has received mixed reviews. Houellebecq’s focus on loving intimacy and care for the elderly within the nuclear family allegedly showcases his transformation from an embittered critic of the capitalist status quo to an apolitical novelist interested in the private sphere. I argue that this criticism overlooks Houellebecq’s concerns about old age and love in his earlier novels and how they relate to his social critique. Particularly Houellebecq’s Possibilité d’une île presents a critique of (...) lonely precarity as the dominant mode of being-in-the-world today. Though critics of post-Fordism have already described post-Fordist forms of life as opportunistic, fearful, and cynical, Houellebecq adds that this uncertain marketized lifestyle also leads to bitterness that increases with old age. By confronting Houellebecq’s phenomenology of contemporary life to Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein, I argue that, whereas Heidegger highlights the role of anxiety and death in fostering a sense of meaning to human existence, Houellebecq rather argues that such an authentic confrontation with death has become impossible in contemporary culture and that love is instead the emotional tonality most responsive to the cultivation of a meaningful good life. (shrink)

This article explores the cannibalistic dimensions of racial disgust and desire in Michel Houellebecq’s Submission. Situated within broader discourses of French déclinisme, Submis- sion offers a melancholic portrait of white nostalgia. Through the tastes and consumptive practices of his characters, Houellebecq depicts white identification as dependent on an ambivalent relationship to corporeal difference. Paying close attention to the mouth’s dual function as a site of ontological triage (sorting out the human from the non-human, the edible from the inedible) (...) and ontological transformation (converting dead matter into living flesh), I argue that cannibalist desire is integral to white nationalist anxiety. (shrink)

The paper examines the ethical dimensions of Michel Houellebecq’s works of fiction. On the basis of keen diagnostics of contemporary Western culture, this world-renowned French writer predicts the destructive social consequences of ultra-liberalism and enters into an argument with transhumanist theories. His writings, depicting the misery of contemporary man and imagining a new human species enhanced by technologies, show that neither the so-called neo-humans nor the “last man” of liberal democracies can reach happiness. The latter can only be achieved (...) if humanist values, shared by previous generations and promoted by the great 19th-century authors (Balzac, Flaubert), are reinvented. (shrink)

Vergänglichkeitsthematisierungen sind in den Romanen Houellebecqs omnipräsent. Doch in welchen Kontexten erscheinen sie, was ist ihre Funktion, und inwiefern sind sie mit barocken Vanitas-Szenarien vergleichbar? Im Zentrum des Aufsatzes steht die Frage, inwiefern die Vanitas-Thematisierung bei Houellebecq im Zusammenhang steht mit einer Statuszuschreibung an die Literatur – und welche Konsequenzen daraus für das Bedeutungspotential seiner Romane abzuleiten sind. Das Zusammenspiel von Vanitas-Szenarien im Werk und Vanitas-Performanz des Autors jenseits seines Werkes lässt gerade vor dem Hintergrund der frühen poetologischen Überlegungen (...) in Gegen das Leben, gegen die Welt ein Literaturverständnis Houellebecqs hervortreten, das im politischen Sinne höchst zweifelhaft ist. Unterwerfung erweist sich als postmoderne Erbauungsliteratur, die ihren Leser irritiert mit der Frage zurücklässt, ob er sich von François emanzipieren sollte – oder ob er einfach nur liest. (shrink)

Vergänglichkeitsthematisierungen sind in den Romanen Houellebecqs omnipräsent. Doch in welchen Kontexten erscheinen sie, was ist ihre Funktion, und inwiefern sind sie mit barocken Vanitas-Szenarien vergleichbar? Im Zentrum des Aufsatzes steht die Frage, inwiefern die Vanitas-Thematisierung bei Houellebecq im Zusammenhang steht mit einer Statuszuschreibung an die Literatur – und welche Konsequenzen daraus für das Bedeutungspotential seiner Romane abzuleiten sind. Das Zusammenspiel von Vanitas-Szenarien im Werk und Vanitas-Performanz des Autors jenseits seines Werkes lässt gerade vor dem Hintergrund der frühen poetologischen Überlegungen (...) in Gegen das Leben, gegen die Welt (1991) ein Literaturverständnis Houellebecqs hervortreten, das im politischen Sinne höchst zweifelhaft ist. Unterwerfung (2015) erweist sich als postmoderne Erbauungsliteratur, die ihren Leser irritiert mit der Frage zurücklässt, ob er sich von François emanzipieren sollte – oder ob er einfach nur liest. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 36 Heft: 2 Seiten: 421-422.

Joanna Demers argues that Houellebecqs apocalypse can be understood as a system analogous to Hegels, and interrogates the ethics of such a system.

This paper presents the ethical nihilism that looms in the condition of sex in the posthuman. It takes over from the backdrop of Hauskeller’s description of the singularity as having a “glorious sex life.” While such a condition is heavily leaning towards hedonistic ethics, the paper critiques that it merely masks nihilistic ethics. The pleasurable picture of ‘happy rapists’ and ‘masturbatory sex’ in posthumanity with sexual affluence faces a disturbing nothingness that caters to the extreme possibility of being sexless. Following (...) from Žižek’s exposition of Houellebecq’s novel The Elementary Particles, which runs counter to Houellebecq’s later novel The Possibility of an Island, the posthuman poses paradoxes that point to a nihilistic ethical domain. Later, the paper presents two paradoxes: First, the paradox of hedonism or happiness, and second, the paradox of wealth or nothingness. (shrink)

This book is the first major study of the theme of misanthropy, its history, arguments both for and against it, and its significance for us today. Misanthropy is not strictly a philosophy. It is an inconsistent thought, and so has often been mocked. But from Timon of Athens to Motörhead it has had a very long life, vast historical purchase and is seemingly indomitable and unignorable. Human beings have always nursed a profound distrust of who and what they are. This (...) book does not seek to rationalize that distrust, but asks how far misanthropy might have a reason on its side, if a confused reason. There are obvious arguments against misanthropy. It is often born of a hatred of physical being. It can be historically explained. It particularly appears in undemocratic cultures. But what of the misanthropy of terminally defeated and disempowered peoples? Or born of progressivisms? Or the misanthropy that quarrels with specious or easy positivities (from Pelagius to Leibniz to the corporate cheer of contemporary `total capital`)? From the Greek Cynics to Roman satire, St Augustine to Jacobean drama, the misanthropy of the French Ancien Regime to Swift, Smollett and Johnson, Hobbes, Schopenhauer and Rousseau, from the Irish and American misanthropic traditions to modern women`s misanthropy, the book explores such questions. It ends with a debate about contemporary culture that ranges from the `dark radicalisms`, queer misanthropy, posthumanism and eco-misanthropy to Houellebecq, punk rock and gangsta rap. (shrink)

Authenticity is a formidable word, a dangerous word, a word whereby fortunes, careers, and reputations can be won or lost. But what has authenticity to do with art? The essays in this book focus on their turbulent relationship ranging across the fields of literature and the visual arts and philosophy, and covering topics as diverse as fictional biography, portraiture, copies and forgeries, war photography, letters as testimony and texts in translation. The reader encounters erasmus, Rousseau, Heidegger, Beckett, Borges, and (...) class='Hi'>Houellebecq; engages with subjects as varied as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, da Vinci's La Belle Ferronniere, and Million Dollar Baby. (shrink)

This article is the result of a critical exercise that is, reading the novels of Mauricio Wacquez understanding them as a rupture and writing project. For this, our proposal takes as its starting point the methodology of stratigraphic cuts proposed by Michel Houellebecq, applying in turn the theoretical dimension of François Meyronnis contained in L’ Axe du Néant, specifically, the concept of division in writing.

This article draws out the political implications of some of the avatars of ancient skepticism in modern fiction. It relies on Martha Nussbaum’s claim that fiction can provide some of the best lessons in moral philosophy to refute her claim that ancient skepticism was a bad influence on morals. It surveys references to skepticism from Shakespeare through such diverse writers as Isabel de Charrière, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Anatole France, and Albert Camus down to recent writers such as Orhan Pamuk (...) and Michel Houellebecq. The most substantial treatment is of Naguib Mahfouz’sCairo Trilogy, which is interpreted in two ways: one, as an example ofisostheniaor equipollence in arguments on both sides of questions about gender in the Islamic world, and two, as the biography of a person who claims to be a self-conscious skeptic. Skepticism emerges as a multi-faceted concept in modern literature, but there are definite references back to the ancient skeptics, including mention of the name Pyrrhonism and knowledge of the writings of Sextus Empiricus. The political implications militate against dogmatic claims to truth and knowledge of a one-dimensional justice. (shrink)

English summary: The compound terms formed with 'post-' - from Postmodernity through Postdemocracy to Postcrisis as the New Normal - can be seen as a symptom of theoretical helplessness. These compounds are based on a kind of dialectics which they explicitely refuse: The idea of a New Normal postulates a return to normalcy at the end of the series of crises in the early 21th century, but it states simultaneously that the old normalcy has eventually been lost forever. In order (...) to shed light on this question, theoretical effort is needed: This study proposes the concepts of normalism, interdiscourse, and collective symbolism. Taking seriously Michel Foucault's idea of a theoretical tool box, it introduces a new and operational concept of antagonism alternative to the one which originates from dialectics. Antagonism in an operational definition represents a dynamic of irriversible de-normalization (i.e. loss of normality, failure of normalism). Using these analytical instruments, categories such as Postmodernity and New Normal can be explained in a new and satisfying manner. The study hereby takes into consideration positions denying antagonism in Postmodernity (e.g. Francis Fukuyama) as well as theories which claim new kinds of antagonism (e.g. Negri and Hardt, Laclau and Mouffe, or Ranciere).These theoretical developments go together with topical analyses of the series of crises after 2001 and particularly after 2007: from the financial crisis through the Euro crisis to the refugees and populism crises. The analytical approach proposed here is particularly apt for studying the role of topical media as well as political discourses in normalization and denormalization processes. As a result, the study proposes a processual scheme of the series of crises as well as a new definition of populism based on the approach of normalism. Finally, it also considers the problems of alternative 'transnormalistic' ways out of the crisis ('flightlines').Interspersed with the study are short literary essays on novels dealing with current antagonisms: by Albert Camus, Thomas Bernhard, Sibylle Berg, Stephen King, Jean Marie Gustave Le ClEzio, Jonathan Littell, and Michel Houellebecq. German description: Die Krisenserie zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhundert, von der Finanz- und Eurokrise bis zur Fluchtlings- und Populismuskrise, hat die vorgangigen Normalitaten in vielen Dimensionen beeintrachtigt. Das lasst sich als Denormalisierung begreifen und wirft die Frage auf, wie soziokulturelle Normalitaten produziert und reproduziert werden. Darauf antwortet das hier aktualisierte, diskurstheoretische Konzept des Normalismus. Kann die Krisenserie sogar zu einem 'Ende der Normalitat' (Gabor Steingart) fuhren und was wurde das bedeuten? Das ist die Frage nach einer belastbaren Bedeutung des in den USA entstandenen Konzepts eines New Normal: Wenn es das Ende der Krisenserie meinen sollte - was unterscheidet es dann von einem 'Old Normal'? Und wie verhalt sich ein New Normal zum ebenso schillernden Begriff einer Postmoderne? Die Antwort der Studie auf solche Fragen kombiniert die Kategorien des Normalismus und des Antagonismus. Sie schlagt ein gegenuber seiner dialektischen Herkunft neues, diskurstheoretisch fundiertes und operatives (empirisch belastbares) Konzept von Antagonismus als tendenziell irreversible Denormalisierung vor. Mit diesem Instrumentarium wird zunachst die Postmoderne (einschliealich der anderen 'Postismen') als das Konzept einer vorgeblich historischen Epoche ohne Antagonismen gefasst. Anschlieaend werden die Krisenserien unter diesem Aspekt analysiert und ein vorlaufiges Prozessschema der Krisenverlaufe erstellt. Dabei wird auch die Krise der politischen Normalitat (Populismuskrise) transparent. Daraus ergibt sich ein Ausblick auf die Alternative zwischen der Gefahr eines katastrophischen Kollapses des Normalismus auf der einen und transnormalistischen Auswegen auf der anderen Seite. (shrink)

La grande littérature française, de Marcel Proust à Michel Houellebecq, avec les chefs d'oeuvre d'André Gide, Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Giraudoux, Eugène Ionesco, Marguerite Yourcenar, Bernard-Marie Koltès, ou Enzo Cormann, reflète la condition humaine dans le monde des valeurs stables et celui de la modernité liquide décrite par Bauman. Ses interrogations concernent l'homme, confronté à l'Histoire, en proie au doute sur le Moi aussi bien que sur les religions.

In 2010, two years after the global financial collapse that triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the best-selling publication in France was not that year’s Prix Goncourt,1 Michel Houellebecq’s La carte et le territoire (The Map and the Territory), a novel published by Flammarion, one of Paris’s leading publishing houses. That honor went to Indignez-vous! (Time for Outrage!), a 32-page pamphlet authored by 93-year-old Stéphane Hessel, a former hero of the French Resistance, a (...) concentration camp survivor and career diplomat. Hessel’s booklet, issued by Indigène Editions, a small provincial publisher, has since sold over 2 million copies, reaching an estimated 10 million .. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que l'inconscient? À cette question, de nombreuses disciplines, de la psychanalyse aux neurosciences, ont proposé une réponse - toujours frustrante. Peut-être cet échec reposait-il sur le fait que l'inconscient a trop longtemps été considéré comme une chose à observer de loin, plutôt que comme un paysage à arpenter, à explorer. S'entourant d'une pléiade d'artistes, de cinéastes et d'écrivains, de Christopher Nolan à Mikhaïl Boulgakov, de Pierre Huygue à Stanley Kubrick, de Michel Houellebecq à Liv Strômquist, Sinziana Ravini propose (...) ici une traversée de l'inconscient en compagnie de ceux qui ont choisi de ne pas chercher à le circonscrire, mais d'en approfondir les chemins. À sa suite, on découvrira un monde où les dimensions les plus narcissiques de l'inconscient se confondent avec les plus collectives - un monde où la vie intime des individus se fait l'écho de celle de la réalité elle-même. Dans un va-et-vient méditatif, avec une approche nouvelle et sensible, Sinziana Ravini cherche moins à définir les règles de compréhension de notre vie psychique qu'à poser les questions susceptibles de nous aider à poursuivre le voyage - à devenir enfin, comme les artistes eux-mêmes, les psychonautes de notre présent."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Most significant problems of contemporary life have their origins in nihilism and its paradoxical logic, which is simultaneously destructive to and constitutive of society. Yet, in social theory, nihilism is a surprisingly under-researched topic. This book develops a systematic account of nihilism in its four main forms: escapism, radical nihilism, passive nihilism and 'perfect nihilism.' It focuses especially on the disjunctive synthesis between passive nihilism and radical nihilism, between the hedonism/disorientation that characterizes the contemporary post-political culture and the emerging forms (...) of despair and violence as a reaction to it. The book deals with nihilism at three levels. First, it addresses the genealogy and consequences of nihilism, which is followed by an excursus through film analysis. Then the book focuses on the 'social,' relating nihilism to capitalism, post-politics and terrorism. Another excursus fleshes out the theoretical argumens by focusing on Houellebecq's fiction. Finally, the possibilities of overcoming nihilism are considered by emphasizing the significance of concepts such as event, agonism and antagonism in this context. (shrink)

ABSTRACT David Roberts’ History of the Present asks what comes after the grand narratives of European modernity. Progress is over, but without a past and with no assured future, the present remains in conceptual limbo. For Roberts, we are entering a new stage of a global cultural modernity marked by the end of European modernism. Taking a fresh look at the contested endings of the modern, Roberts suggests that an extended concept of contemporaneity might replace the problematic dualism of past (...) and present, modernity and post-modernity at the end of the twentieth century. This review article discusses Roberts’ argument with reference to the work of Budapest School members, Ágnes Heller and György Markus, with reference more broadly to seminal theorists such as Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Alain Touraine and Guy Debord, and to writers including Marcel Proust, Heinrich Mann, Aldous Huxley and Michel Houellebecq, in relation to the questions of cultural modernity. (shrink)

Ausgehend von den Grundpositionen der antiken Stoa erschließen die beiden interdisziplinär angelegten Sammelbände erstmals historisch und systematisch die außergewöhnlich breite Wirkungsgeschichte dieser philosophischen Schule. Sie reicht von der Spätantike über Renaissance und Humanismus bis in die Gegenwart. Die stoische Tradition prägte nicht nur Philosophie, Literatur und Politik, sondern wirkte auch auf Theologie, Kunst, Recht, Ökonomie, Psychologie und Medizin. Dabei stand das Programm ethischer Lebensorientierung im Mittelpunkt. Dem einleitenden Gesamtüberblick folgen 42 Abhandlungen, die zentrale Themen des Stoizismus und ihre Transformationen untersuchen: (...) u.a. bei Petrarca, Alberti, Erasmus, Montaigne, Melanchthon, Lipsius, Rubens, Monteverdi; Shakespeare, Opitz, Gryphius, Fleming, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, Kleist, Čechov, Pessoa, Grass, Houellebecq; Pascal, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche. Platz 5 der Sachbuch-Bestenliste des Monats März 2009 der Süddeutschen Zeitung und des NDR. (shrink)

In the primordial scene, which Girard has described, society is constituted on the basis of the lynching mob, whose mimetic desire, envy and egotism culminate in sacrificing the scapegoat. With spite, though, we confront the opposite situation, in which the mimetic desire does not establish but rather destroys `society'. Here everybody, and not only the scapegoat, is threatened with destruction. Regarding the genealogy of spite, the article elaborates on radical nihilism (that is, the will to negation) and relates this to (...) passive nihilism (the negation of the will as such), arguing that these two nihilisms are significant to understand both the hedonism/disorientation that characterizes contemporary post-political culture and the emerging forms of despair and violence as a reaction to it. These two nihilisms constitute a non-dialectical `synthesis' in spite of seemingly antagonistic `disjunctions'. The article concretizes the genealogy of spite with two cases: French bestselling writer Houellebecq's novels and (the war against) terrorism. Then it focuses on the relationship between the three social formations (primitive, despotic and capitalist societies) and spite as an `affect without society'. Finally, agonism as a political virtue is set against spite. (shrink)

L’information est, fondamentalement, de l’ordre de l’utilitaire. À l’inverse, la communication ne saurait se réduire à l’échange d’une simple marchandise. Mais communiquer, c’est autre chose, comme l’a démontré Dominique Wolton dans ses travaux ou Michel Maffesoli quand il parle de « reliance » : c’est rajouter du ciment social ; c’est la « colle » du monde actuel. L’imaginaire de la mondialisation est la juxtaposition des fragments collés par la communication disséminée par des moyens technologiques. Néanmoins, de telles technologies aident (...) certes à créer de nouveaux imaginaires, mais elles ne sont pas, en soi, suffisantes. Encore faut-il que les imaginaires culturels communiquent entre eux, à l’épreuve de l’altérité : la traduction, de ce point de vue, est une interface incontournable. La traduction de Michel Houellebecq au Brésil servira d’illustration concrète.Information is fundamentally utilitarian, but communication cannot be reduced to a mere exchange of merchandise. Communication is something else, as Dominique Wolton has demonstrated in his work, or Michel Maffesoli when he discusses the French concept of “reliance” . Communication is the cement that binds society, the glue that holds our world together. Globalisation, in our imagination, is a juxtaposition of fragments that are glued together by communication disseminated through technological means. However, although these technologies clearly play their part in developing new imaginative conceptions, they do not suffice in themselves. The imaginative conceptions of different cultures have to communicate and confront their differences. Translation, from this point of view, is a uniquely necessary interface. Translations of Michel Houellebecq in Brazil are used here as an illustration. (shrink)

Die Abwesenheit des Unbekannten bleibt unbemerkt -- Historische Einbildungen : zu Olivier Rolins "Tigre en papier" -- Leben und denken wie die Schweine : Kleine Dialektik des Poststrukturalismus (von Gilles Châtelet zu Michel Houellebecq) -- Das Verschwinden der leerlaufenden Gegenwart aus der Geschichte : zu Maurice Dantecs Trivialroman "La sirène rouge" -- Tartuffe desakralisiert : zur Krise des frazösischen Bildungssystems -- "Les princes sont des dieux" : zum Religionsbegriff des französischen Staates -- Die Demokratie gegen ihre Liebhaber verteidigt : (...) zum Denken Claude Leforts -- Totale Marktwirtschaft : zu Alain Supiots Kritik am Ultraliberalismus -- Warum Gesetze? : zu Pierre Legendres "Abhnadlung über den Vater" -- Wem gehören die Töchter? : zum sexuellen Machtanspruch der Konsumgesellschaften -- Kleine Illusionen : Anmerkungen zu den deutsch-französischen Kulturbeziehungen. (shrink)

This reply to Gunkel and Zwart further reflects on, and responds to, the following main points: the Heideggerian character of my view and the potential link to Kafka, the suggestion that we should become hackers, the interpretation of my approach in terms of the Hegelian Master–Slave dialectic, the lack of an empirical dimension, and the claim that I think that modern heroism entails overcoming vulnerability. I acknowledge Heideggerian influence, reflect on what it could mean to think about living with ICTs (...) as a kind of hacking, comment on the Hegelian interpretation of my approach and its application to human–technology relations, bring novels and films into the discussion, and clarify that contemporary works of fiction are not necessarily entirely modern and that it has been a central claim here and in my book that although modern thinking and practice attempts to overcome vulnerability with the help of technologies, this is not successful, or it is illusory. (shrink)