Foreign Food, Foreign Flesh
Apathetic Anthropophagy and Racial Melancholia in Houellebecq's Submission
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5339537 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Luke Johnson (0000-0002-4482-7072, corresponding author), Luke F Johnson |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 25-40 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | SubStance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0049-2426 • E-ISSN: 1527-2095 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/sub.2020.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4285723655 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
This article explores the cannibalistic dimensions of racial disgust and desire in Michel Houellebecq's Submission.Situated within broader discourses of French déclinisme, Submission 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. I. MeatOne of the more telling projects of the Rassemblement National is their vendetta against halal meat.Calling for a lawsuit against commercial fraud in 2012, Marine Le Pen claimed that "the entirety of meat distributed in Île-de-France, unbeknownst to the consumer, is exclusively halal" ("L'offensive," my translation).For Le Pen, this insidious ruse was a way of showing the French that they were being disrespected in their own country.She continues in Le Parisien, "the fact that everybody is obligated to submit to dietary constraints imposed by a religion... is profoundly unacceptable and disgraceful" ("L'offensive"; my translation and emphasis).This particular alimentary strain of xenophobic anxiety has resurfaced at various points in the party's history under various guises-at times under the aegis of corporate transparency ("Le Pen"), at times under the banner of animal rights ("L'offensive").Of course, nativist fear of halal meat neither begins nor ends with the RN.Marine Le Pen took her cues in 2012 from an Envoyé spécial exposé ("Envoyé special"), protests against halal meat processing across France have drawn participants from multiple parties ("L'extrême droite"), and conservative pundit Éric Zemmour writes of la
Art · Biology · Flesh · Melancholia · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Food Science · French Literature and Critical Theory · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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