Excerpt from the Book of Kells (ca. 800 AD)
“A brilliant novel of ideas” — that’s how a Wall Street Journal review quoted on the front cover describes Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles. But calling it a novel of ideas just doesn’t adequately capture the ambition of something that manages to cram so much into less than 300 pages. Beneath all the sleaze and provocation of this insolent work of art lies a philosophical treatise on civilization from the dawn of Christianity to the present.
The story in Houellebecq’s second novel centres on the lives of two (half) brothers growing up in postwar France. Michel, emotionless and a-sexual, is an accomplished biologist and Bruno, a sexually depraved high school teacher. Both were abandoned by their mother (a character based on Houellebecq’s own), a woman swept up in the profound transformations of the postwar society, especially in the unbridled hedonism of the hippie movement of the 1960s. Their mother’s neglect would continue to shape Michel and Bruno throughout their lives. And although they spent most of their childhood apart, and although they are polar opposites, the fates of the two brothers remain intimately intertwined.
Michel and Bruno’s lives unfold against the backdrop of the third “metaphysical mutation” of Western society. Metaphysical mutations, according to the novel, are “radical, global transformations in the values to which the majority subscribe”. The first metaphysical mutation took place with the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire; the second with the gradual emergence of modern science and secularism over the past couple of centuries. Houellebecq never spells out what the still-unfolding third metaphysical mutation actually entails. But what is clear is that this epoch-shifting transformation is being driven in large part by advances in molecular biology (especially the completion of the human genome project and the prospect of human cloning), as well as the epistemological and ontological breakthroughs of quantum physics.
At the heart of each metaphysical mutation is a distinct worldview; an overarching mode of thought concerning how nature is theorized and studied and how society is organized. Houellebecq sees materialism as the hallmark of the second metaphysical mutation. Nowhere is the materialist worldview more prevalent than in biology, Michel’s own field.
The biological sciences tends to treat molecules, the basic building blocks of nature, as “separate and distinct entities linked solely by electromagnetic attraction and repulsion.” And most biologists, according to Michel’s own estimation, are engaged in a form of mindless empiricism. They are “not great thinkers” or “Rimbauds with microscopes”, but “simple technicians,” who are driven less by intellectual curiosity and more by career advancement and the prospect of a vacation in Greenland. This disparaging view of the state of biology is summed up by Michel’s colleague Desplechin, who comments on the process of decoding DNA:
“There’s no mystery to decoding the genome…You decode on molecule, then another and another, feed the results into a computer and let it work out the subsequences. You send a fax to Colorado — they’re working on gene B27, we’re working on C33. It’s like following a recipe. From time to time someone comes up with an inconsequential improvement in equipment and they give him the Nobel Prize. It’s a joke.”
The message Houellebecq is trying to convey is not that these scientific developments are negative, but that there is no creativity, no big-picture thinking and certainly no ethical reflection on what ends these technical research procedures serve. Materialism also comes to pervade postwar French society. In the preceding Judeo-Christian era, society was regarded as an inseparable (if hierarchically organized) whole. The Christian view of the interconnectedness of social relations is captured in the sermon at Bruno’s wedding:
“He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall be joined unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh.”
But the scientific revolution undermined the religious foundations of society. The rise of science was bound up with a political revolution, under which liberalism has been elevated as the predominant philosophy for understanding and organizing social relations. Liberalism has a tendency to treat human beings just as modern biology treats molecules: as fundamentally separate. The rational individual becomes the focus, humanity is reduced to biology, and human behaviour is understood in terms of a strict calculus (just think of the rational utility-maximizer in neoclassical economics).
Once again, the message needs to be interpreted with caution. Houllebecq is not trying to suggest that the rise of liberalism is negative or that we should somehow orchestrate a return to the Christian era. Indeed, the novel provides us with an example of one the positive aspects of liberalism. The rise of a secular society broke the staid feudal hierarchy, allowing the son of Corsican peasants, Michel and Bruno’s maternal great-grandfather, to go to university and become a successful engineer.
What exactly, then, is the issue? According to the novel, the main problem with the second metaphysical mutation is that it produced a universal moral order to replace god and religion. “The supremacy of youth and individual freedom” has come to supplant Judeo-Christian values. And as a result, society comes more and more to resemble the vicious hierarchy of the animal kingdom. Strength and physical beauty are the new objects of worship. This materialist fixation with the body brings with it a fear of aging (even the beautiful and strong cannot halt the deterioration of the human body) and a grave fear of death.
The result of all of this is an atomized society, one whose members are increasingly incapable of empathy and love for other human beings. In this context, people seek out alternative forms of meaning in place of traditional spirituality, and often end up finding it in new age mysticism. But The Elementary Particles portrays these new age movements in a critical (and often-times comical) way. By indulging individualism and the worship of the body, these movements reinforce atomization (parallels can be found in Victor Pelevin’s novel Homo Zapiens: in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism in Russia people too were searching for meaning and found it in new age thinking).
Both Michel and Bruno are really symptomatic of this process of atomization. The fact that neither of them was loved by their mother leaves an permanent psychological scar.
As a child Michel, was rather stoic and incapable of fostering close relationships with other human beings. This included Michel’s friend (and later girlfriend) Annabelle, who was not only physically beautiful, but also entirely devoted to him. As Michel enters adulthood, things deteriorate further. He lives an increasingly isolated and sterile suburban existence, his whole existence being shaped by the food offers at his local supermarket. How can one help but feel a knot of depression in the stomach when reading this line?
“Though an undiscriminating shopper, he [Michel] was delighted when his local Monoprix had an ‘Italian Fortnight’”.
Toward the end of the novel, Michel has one last chance to meaningfully connect with Anne, who’s entered and left his life on several occasion. Michel realizes that he’s incapable of feeling love. But just when it seems that he is able to dedicate at least part of his life to Annabelle, by fulfilling her dream of having a child together, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Even this gut-wrenching experience is not enough to shake Michel from his emotional stupor.
Bruno is in some ways even more traumatized by his mother’s neglect. At boarding school he experiences what can only be described as torture. As a teenager and an adult, Bruno spends the bulk of his time and energy looking for sexual gratification. This puts him into plenty of awkward situations, it ends up destroying his marriage and it eventually leads to a severe mental collapse. But like his brother, Bruno also ends up with one last chance at a meaningful relationship.
At a new-age summer retreat Bruno ends up meeting Christiane, a biologist who shares his hedonistic worldview. Bruno and Christiane grow close and Bruno seems on the verge of experiencing love for the first time in his life. But Christiane falls ill with a condition that leaves her paralyzed. Unable to cope with her physical deterioration, she commits suicide. Bruno makes his last appearance in the novel at his mother’s funeral, the last time the two brothers would ever see each other. At this point, his mental breakdown is complete. He’s extremely agitated and emotionally volatile. His thought process is almost completely incoherent — he rails against nature and the animal kingdom. His Nintendo Gameboy is his only solace.
Houellebecq’s style is often referred to as “depressive realism.” And given what happens to both brothers, it is not difficult to see why others have given him this label. But the novel is not all doom and gloom. In the closing chapters the novel speculates about what might come with the third metaphysical mutation (keep in mind it was written in 1998). This exercise in forecasting the fate of humanity is undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of the book.
Throughout the novel, Michel becomes increasingly disturbed by the atomized world around him. And from 2000 until his death in 2009 he sets about developing a philosophical system to replace materialism. Michel finds great promise in quantum physics, and compares the intellectual milieu surrounding Niels Bohr Copenhagen in the 1920s to Ancient Greece.
One particular development in physics that fascinates Michel is the Aspect experiments. Conducted by French physicist Allen Aspect in the 1980s, these experiments provided evidence for the EPR paradox, which claimed that when particles interact, their destinies become linked, even when they are separated by vast distances. The quantum world, Michel thought, provide the foundations for a new philosophy “to restore conditions which made love possible”. Though it is never mentioned in the novel, Michel’s ideas bear a strong resemblance to physicist David Bohm’s theory of wholeness and implicate order. Symbolically, this new philosophy that Michel formulates is inspired by the Book of Kells, a ninth-century work of Irish monks, which depicted the entire universe — man, nature and the heavens — as an intricately interwoven whole.
A decade’s worth of thought led to Michel’s crowning achievement, the Clifden Notes, “a complex blend of memories, personal impressions and theoretical reflections.” In 2009, the year of Michel’s death, a summarized version of these notes appeared in an 80 page article in Nature entitled “Toward Perfect Reproduction.” Subsequent experiments by molecular biologists had verified all of Michel’s original hypotheses. And this led to a startling discovery: “Every animal species, however highly evolved, could be transformed into a similar species reproduced by cloning, and immortal.”
The task of interpreting and implementing this new framework would be left to a young discipline by the name of Hubczejak, a biochemist who vehemently defended Michel’s most radical proposal: “that mankind must disappear and give way to a new species which was asexual and immortal, a species which had outgrown individuality, separation and evolution.” Hubczejak’s efforts were met with resistance from religious leaders and humanists, but he was able to rally new age types to his cause. In 2011, Hubczejak established the Movement for Human Potential, an organization dedicated to the development of the science of genetic engineering. The purpose? To eliminate sexual reproduction, aging and death, the hitherto cause of so much angst, in order to “restore a sense of community, of permanence and of the sacred.” In 2029 the first member of this new asexual species was created.
What are we to make of Houellebecq’s forecasting of the third metaphysical mutation? I think it is open to two interpretations.
On one hand, it’s easy to interpret this as Houellebecq being Houellebecq — the typically cynical, depressive realist, who has lost all faith in humanity. We’ve gone so far down the road of atomization, society has become so sick, that the only way to save ourselves is to eliminate sexual reproduction and death through cloning. No amount of political change will save us from ourselves. In fact, Houellebecq has elsewhere argued that politics have little influence on history and that technology is the primary driver of historical change. The cloning solution could be the product of a cynical view of human nature and of the impossibility of meaningful political action.
But I think there’s also another, more nuanced interpretation to be made. Keep in mind that Houellebecq is careful to assign someone other than Michel, the discipline Hubczejak, for carrying forward (and arguably bastardizing) Michel’s ideas. In an effort to broaden their appeal, Hubczejak has not only grossly simplifies these ideas, but also interprets them in a narrowly positivistic and technical way.
All of the philosophical underpinnings of Michel’s ideas are ignored by Hubczejak, as well as by the molecular biologists in charge of human cloning, and by the rest of the population that has been won over to Movement for Human Potential. In this sense, Houellebecq seems to suggest that human cloning can only address some of society’s ills if the technical science behind it is accompanied by a new philosophy. This is a slightly (and only slightly) less depressing interpretation of The Elementary Particles because it appreciates the fact that human closing requires careful philosophical reflection (which in itself, puts some faith into humanity and the human mind’s capacity to decide what is ethical).
Whichever interpretation is correct, there seems to be little sign that humanity is capable of halting the process of atomization. Its perverse effects are everywhere evident we look. In Japan people can now pay their way out of loneliness by renting friends, and even spouses. Social media makes people more connected, but it’s most avid users (including “selfie”-takers) report feeling lonelier than others. Researchers now fear that loneliness, which increase the risk of death by 26%, will be the next major public health issue.
Houellebecq’s prediction of the first human clone in 2029 appears a bit hasty, but experts are now predicting that scientific developments will render sexual reproduction obsolete within two decades. The main question that those with a faith in progressive political change will have to address: is it possible to formulate a feasible, alternative solution to atomization, one that doesn’t involve genetic engineering? The brilliance of The Elementary Particles is that it forces us to confront this uncomfortable question.