Submission by Michel Houellebecq

Second reading. François is a renowned scholar of Joris-Karl Huysmans whose life (intellectually, physically, social relations, etc.) has been in a steady fall since his greatest accomplishment, his doctoral thesis. Now in his forties, his daily routine consists of eating microwave dinners, watching YouPorn, and reading novels in the company of a lot of alcohol.

Submission is written alongside Huysmans' oeuvre. To confront despair, decline, and suffering due to dyshidrosis, hemorrhoids, and other ailments, François follows Huysmans and attempts a conversion, only to fail. (Houellebecq commented somewhere in a lecture that his original title of the novel was "The Conversion.")

Meanwhile, it is the time of the elections, and a fierce political battle unfolds: the centre quickly dissolves and the race is between the Islamic party led by the charismatic Mohammed Ben Abbes (in partnership with the socialist party) and Marine Le Pen's party. On the ground, radical elements of both parties--Islamic extremists and French nativists--engage in violent conflict. The Islamic party wins the election; this victory starts to be replicated by other Islamic parties in numerous other countries in Europe.

​There are a few alt-right like elements with Houellebecq that I think is reflected in the novel: an othering gaze is directed from early on in the novel to "a small knot of chillingly serious Chinese women who rarely spoke to one another..." (p. 16) as well as "veiled North Africans, all just as serious and inscrutable" (p. 17). There are elements of nativist anxiety--there is the discourse of civilizational conflict between Islam and the West and the anxiety of cultural and demographic capture by the growing Muslim population. I also noticed that the well-connected and formidable Marie-Françoise (specialist in Balzac) is relegated to the role of housewife in the second half of the novel. Now retired and in charge of the kitchen, she is described as "thriving" and wearing "an apron bearing the humorous phrase 'Don't Holler at the Cook--That's the Boss's Job!'" She is mute and allows the men to talk.

Despite these elements, Houellebecq's main target of critique is the incompetent self-serving elite that has led the decline (in civilizational terms) in France and in the West. The title Submission refers to this submission by the French elite and intellectuals, who submit easily to the new political party, as well as submission as a core concept in Islamic religion (this is explained near the end of the novel through the character of Robert Rédiger).

Unlike the previous elites in power, the new and competent Islamic government becomes a revitalizing force for France, François, and, by extension perhaps, Europe. With hopes for a religious redemption abandoned, François also submits to the new regime and gains bourgeois happiness. His own reading of Huysmans changes accordingly: François concludes that the topic of Huysmans' novels is really bourgeois happiness.

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