Is The Map More Interesting Than The Territory? A Post-Representational Approach to Michel Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory
Keywords:
post-representation, representation, Houellebecq, autofiction, crime fictionAbstract
This collaborative, interdisciplinary article analyses Houllebecq’s use of crime fiction and autofiction in The Map and the Territory (2010). The novel’s intra- inter- and extra-textual geographies, including its depiction of urban and rural space, are explored through a post-representational lens. We argue that Houllebecq uses crime fiction and autofiction to destabilise and disrupt Baudrillardian signs and simulacra as well as Barthesian mythologies of the author - setting up his own ‘death of the author’ by writing his avatar’s murder. By analysing how the novel 'sets the scene' in its depiction of both Houellebecq and France’s rural and urban spaces, we find that the way the text maps and describes these spaces in/on/through which the novel 'takes place' lends itself to a processual or assemblage understanding of that space, where reality and representation are co-produced relationally. This spatial co-production leads us to productively re-consider the novel's broader themes through this same post-representational lens, and to problematise distinctions between reality and representation, author and text, and map and territory.References
Allen, J. (2011) ‘Powerful assemblages?’ Area, 43(2), pp. 154-157.
Anderson, J. (2016) “Towards an Assemblage Approach to Literary Geography.’ Literary Geographies, 1(2), pp. 120-137.
Bakhtin, M. (1981) Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Baudrillard, J. (1981) Simulacres et simulation. Paris: Galilée.
Baudrillard, J. (1988 [1986]) America, London: Verso.
Barthes, R. (1957) Mythologies. Paris:Seuil.
Barthes, R. (1967) ‘The Death of the Author.’ Aspen, 5-6.
Beyer, C. (2012) ‘Death of the Author’: Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Police Procedurals.’ In Miller, V. and Oakley, H. (eds) Cross-Cultural Connections in Crime fictions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 141-159.
Buvik, P. (2013) ‘La Représentation interrogée ou de Baudrillard à Houellebecq.’ In Viard, B. and van Wesemael, S. (eds) L'Unité de l'œuvre de Michel Houellebecq. Paris: Classiques Garnier.
Caquard, S. (2011) ‘Cartography I: Mapping narrative cartography.’ Progress in Human Geography, 37(1), pp. 135-144.
Caquard, S. (2014) ‘Cartography II: Collective cartographies in the social media era.’ Progress in Human Geography, 38(1), pp. 143-150.
Caquard, S. (2015) ‘Cartography III: A post-representational perspective on cognitive cartography.’ Progress in Human Geography, 39(2), pp. 225-235.
Chabert, G. (2002) ‘Michel Houellebecq, lecteur d'Auguste Comte.’ Revue Romane, 37(2), pp. 187-204.
Champigny, R. (1977) What Will have Happened. London: Bloomington.
Compagnon, A. (2001) ‘Introduction: forme, style et genre littéraire.’ Cours de M. Antoine Compagnon. Fabula. [Online] [Accessed 10 November 2016]. http://www.fabula.org/ compagnon/genre.php.
Cook, M. (2011) Narrative of Enclosure in Detective Fiction; The Locked Room Mystery. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1988) A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizoprenia. London: Athlone Press.
Diken, B. (2016) ‘The Map, the Territory, and the Impossibility of Painting a Priest.’ Critical Sociology, 42(7-8), pp. 1109-1124.
Dittmer, J. (2014) ‘Geopolitical Assemblages and Complexity.’ Progress in Human Geography, 38(3), pp. 385-401.
Duncan, N. and Duncan, J. (2004) Landscapes of Privilege: The politics of the aesthetic in an American Suburb. London: Routledge.
Eco, U. (1986) Travels In Hyperreality. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Eisenzweig, U. (1983) ‘Présentation du genre.’ Littérature, 49(1), pp. 3-15.
Elden, S. (2010) ‘Thinking Territory Historically.’ Geopolitics, 15(4), pp. 757-761.
Featherstone, D. (2011) ‘On assemblage and articulation.’ Area, 43(2), pp.139-142.
Geherin, D. (2008) Scene of the Crime; The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction, Jefferson: McFarland & Co.
Gerlach, J. (2015) ‘Editing worlds: Participatory mapping and a minor geopolitics.’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40(2), pp. 273-286.
Gorrara, C. (2000) ‘Narratives of Protest and the Roman noir in Post-1968.’ French Studies: A Quarterly Review, 54(3), pp. 313-325.
de Haan, M. (2004) ‘Entretien avec Michel Houellebecq.’ (interview between Martin de Haan and Houellebecq featured in) Michel Houellebecq. Wesemael, Sabine van (editor) CRIN. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Harris, A. (2017) ‘Michel Houellebecq’s Transmedial Œuvre: Extension of the Realm of Creative Intervention.’ Itinéraires, 2016(2). [Online] [Accessed 17 October 2018] http://itineraires.revues.org/3441.
Harley, J. (1989) ‘Deconstructing the Map.’ Cartographica, 26(2), pp. 1-20.
Holmes, D. (2017) ‘The Way We Read Now: Middlebrow Fiction in Twenty-First Century Europe.’ CALL Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language. 2(1), pp. 1-21.
Hones, S. (2008) ‘Text as it happens: Literary geography.’ Geography Compass, 2(5), pp. 1301-1317.
Hones, S. (2014) Literary Geographies; Narrative Space in Let the Great World Spin. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Houellebecq, M. (2010) La Carte et le Territoire. Paris: Flammarion.
Houellebecq, M. (1991) Rester Vivant : Méthode. Paris: La Différence.
Houellebecq, M. (2000) Lanzarote. Paris: Flammarion.
Houellebecq, M. (2001) Plateforme. Paris: Flammarion.
Houellebecq, M. (2016) Houellebecq 2001-2010. Paris: Flammarion.
Jonquet, T. (1999) Mygale. Paris: Gallimard.
Kitchin, R., Gleeson, J. and Dodge, M. (2013) ‘Unfolding mapping practices: a new epistemology for cartography.’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38(3), pp. 480-496.
Kitchin, R., Perkins, C. and Dodge, M. 2009 ‘Thinking about maps.’ In Dodge, M., Kitchin, R. and Perkins, C. (eds) Rethinking maps: new frontiers of cartographic theory. London: Routledge, pp. 1-25.
Kneale, J. (2003) ‘Secondary Worlds; Reading novels as geographical research.’ In Blunt, A., Gruffudd, P., May, J., Ogborn, M. and Pinder, D. (eds) Cultural Geography in Practice. London: Arnold, pp. 39-54.
Korzybski, A. (1933) ‘A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics.’ Science and Sanity. New Jersey: The Institute of General Semantics, pp. 747-761.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social; An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Manchette, J.-P. (2003) Chroniques. Paris: Rivages/noir.
McCann, J. (2007) ‘La Lutte des discours: Plateforme de Michel Houellebecq.’ In Clément, M. L. and Wesemael, S. van (eds) Michel Houellebecq sous la Loupe. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, pp. 367-377.
Meizoz, J. (2016) La Littérature “en personne” : Scène médiatique et formes d’incarnation. Geneva: Slatkine Erudition.
Miller, V. and Oakley, H. (2012) Cross-Cultural Connections in Crime fictions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rabosseau, S. (2007) ‘Houellebecq ou le renouveau du roman expérimental.’ In Clément, M. L. and Wesemael, S. van (eds) Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe, Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, pp. 43-50.
Rossetto, T. (2014) ‘Theorising maps with literature.’ Progress in Human Geography, 38(4), pp. 513-530.
Steiner, L. (2009) Sade-Houellebecq, du boudoir au sex-shop. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Schmid, D. (2012) ‘From the Locked Room to the Globe: Space in Crime fiction.’ In Miller, V. and Oakley, H. (eds) Cross-Cultural Connections in Crime fictions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 7-23.
Sweeney, C. (2013) Michel Houellebecq and the Literature of Despair. London: Bloomsbury.
Turchi, P. (2004) Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer. San Antonio: Trinity University Press.
Turnbull, D. (1989) Maps are Territories: Science is an Atlas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Viard, B. (2004) ‘Houellebecq du côté de Rousseau.’ In van Wesemael, S. (ed) Michel Houellebecq. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 127-141.
Viard, B. (2007) ‘Faut-il en rire ou en pleurer? Michel Houellebecq du côté de Marcel Mauss et de côté de Balzac.’ In Clément, M. and van Wesemael, S. (eds) Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 31-42.
Vilain, P. (2016) La Littérature sans idéal. Paris: Grasset.
Williams, R. (2015) ‘Michel Houllebecq and crime fiction : between polar and poésie.’ Revue Critique de Fixxion Francaise Contemporaine, 10, pp. 148-159.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
