Derisione, desiderio, identificazione in una pagina di Michel Houellebecq

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the presence of typically comic narrative elements, especially concerning the characters’ sexual and social life in Houellebecq’s novels. The primary effect of this elements is to make the reader laugh, but also to cause him to distance themselves from the disturbing representations. At a later time, the same elements will trigger identification mechanisms in the reader thorough their pathetic connotations. The method is a close reading of some pages of Houellebecq’s novels Whatever (1998) and Atomised (1998). The key assumption is that the literary text is always ambivalent, multiform and plural, and that these components can brought to light thorough textual analysis.