I was horrified yesterday when I saw a leaflet in Lausanne’s head municipal library at Chauderon on one of the small tables upon which leaflets announcing forthcoming cultural events are displayed. It was not the type of event which this leaflet (both sides of which are shown above) was there to give notice of – a colloquium organised first and foremost by the French department of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lausanne – which had unsettled me so much (and I refuse to delve on the picture because in no way could anybody claim that Mr Houellebecq is being gagged), as such events are simply gatherings for university researchers and the general public where they can discuss topics pertaining to fields of academic enquiry. Rather it was that this academic conference (held yesterday and today) would be focusing on the work of a French author whom I now find totally objectionable because of the abject ideology he seems to have become a mouthpiece for in contemporary French literature: Islamophobia.
Judging from the topics discussed during this colloquium (based on the programme which you can access here should you care to find out what was discussed), this issue does not seem to have figured prominently, to say the least. As such, I sincerely regret that taxpayer’s money (including mine because I pay taxes to the city of Lausanne) will have gone to organising an academic conference on an author whose most recent novel seems to me to have been designed uniquely to stir up religious and racial tensions in France and probably elsewhere in Europe, too – a novel thus part of a long list of works of so-called ‘artistic expression’ against what is the religion of more than a billion people.
As I see it, Mr Houellebecq has become a full member of what Nathan Lean has aptly described as the ‘Islamophobia industry’. By having organised a colloquium on such an author which seems to have refused to deal with this issue (based on the programme and on statements made by one of its organisers in the local press – pp 3 and 4 – because I would not have attended this conference even if I had been paid to do so given that it had to do with this author whose views I think are designed to exacerbate tensions between the religious communities), one could argue that the University of Lausanne, even if it may not be described as condoning the views which Mr Houellebecq upholds, has at least given some legitimacy to them – in other words, almost made them a little more ‘respectable’.
Colloquium announcement, news section, website of the Swiss French-speaking Narratology Network, accessed 3 March (link to version at the Internet Archive)
‘Michel Houellebecq: “Am I Islamophobic? Probably, yes”’, The Guardian, 6 September 2015 [there is an interesting picture of him with another extremely controversial figure, BHL.); much harsher views on Mr Houellebecq can be found in articles published in French on Startpage with the keywords ‘Houellebecq’ and ‘islamophobie’, especially from non-mainstream outlets
‘To submit or not to submit, that is the question.’ A post explaining from my personal experience why it is very important to exercise a healthy dose of scepticism as regards the attitude the media were trying to get you to adopt with respect to Houellebecq/Charlie Hebdo/etc.
It is ‘ballot time’ here again – what I am almost tempted to describe as a Swiss speciality given that the Swiss people are called to the ballot station several times a year. I am not going to delve on the issues which we are being asked to vote on no later than this coming Sunday – there are some very important ones indeed, but I am more interested in recounting how I was able to set my mind at peace after having been affected by a horrid political poster that I had caught sight of mid-October just before the previous national ballot session. In fact, it was not one political poster that traumatised me so much, but the three which were aligned on the display stand allotted to the far-right parties in front of Lausanne’s beautiful palace of La Riponne and which to me at least conveyed a message even more evil than what emanated from any of the three posters if viewed only individually.
Ghastly political posters, Lausanne, 17th October 2015
A bit like Spinoza and the ghastly vision that assailed him and led him to change his life, this highly disturbing, quasi traumatic vision of pure evil (racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and some overtones of hatred of women) haunted me for many days – in fact, until the Paris attacks and the subsequent ‘tsunami of Islamophobia’ [my coinage] this event (I would be lying to myself if I did not write ‘predictably’) unleashed in the so-called West.
So I was so shocked when I saw a similar demonic poster near a school more or less in the centre of the city where I live (i.e. Lausanne) roughly a fortnight ago. The more so as the rhetoric this time had been ratcheted up to include a blatant lie: ‘terror’ [‘It is time to remove the veil from our eyes: immigration, criminality, terror, plundering of the welfare state’]. As I noticed a couple of days later that one such poster had been ‘neutered’ (most of the surface of the poster having been torn off) and as I was wanted to take a picture of this poster as an example of the Islamophobia that is being imprinted on our minds, I set off early Sunday morning on a tour of Lausanne to take photographic records of the public’s rejection of this example of a highly nefarious, divisive and dangerous ideology.
I cannot explain how relieved I was that every single poster I saw had received some degree of ‘doctoring’: it would seem that somebody had been so outraged by this extremely despicable attempt at scapegoating Muslims for problems (whether real or imaginary) with which they have nothing to do that, in one instance, they went so far as to leave from this terrible poster (as well as from the one showing the two right-wing contenders for seats at Lausanne’s municipality) not more than an inch or so of the poster.
Reactions to a sequel to the above ghastly poster, Lausanne, 21st February 2016
Elsewhere, the ‘amendments’ meted out to this awful poster (as seen on the right) are a (justified) allusion to what is likely to happen with such an ideology when it is pursued to its extreme point: dehumanisation, physical abuse and sometimes even murder, as was the case in an infamous jail in US occupied Iraq (Abu Ghraib) – to which I reckon the black hood is a subtle allusion.
I walked back home and stopped at my favourite waterfall, as if to cleanse my soul from the filth it had been exposed to while taking half a dozen photographs of this purely demonic political poster.
Just before that, I brightened up when I sung to myself some of my favourite tunes from David Bowie’s hits when I passed in front of the house where he had lived during his 14-year long stay in Switzerland.
I think that I can contend that the effects of this ghastly vision dating back to mi-October have now been flushed out of my psyche – thank God for that.
PLEASE NOTE THAT I EXPERIENCED A GENUINE EPIPHANY EARLY SEPTEMBER LAST YEAR WHEN I ATTENDED A LITERARY CONFERENCE. AS A RESULT OF THIS AND OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS OF A GEOPOLITICAL NATURE, I AM NOW FULLY AWARE OF THE DARK FORCES AT PLAY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, FORCES WHICH ARE BENT UPON STIRRING UP HATRED BETWEEN THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES. ALTHOUGH I AM ASHAMED THAT I FELL PREY TO THESE VERY FORCES, AND I AM THUS ASHAMED BY THE SAME TOKEN OF THIS VERY ENTRY, I HAVE DECIDED TO LEAVE IT ONLINE JUST SO AS TO ILLUSTRATE THAT ENLIGHTNMENT IS POSSIBLE WHEN ONE REALISES THE EXTENT TO WHICH ONE IS BEING MANIPULATED (THROUGH THE MASS MEDIA MAINLY) ON A DAILY BASIS. THE ONLY CHANGES I MADE TO THE TEXT ARE AS FOLLOWS: INSERTION OF ‘[sic in the text]’ AND SHIFT OF THE COMMA JUST BEFORE THIS COMMENT. DATED 4TH MARCH 2016.
The specificity of literature, the major art of a West which is nearing its demise before our eyes, is not very difficult to define, however. As much as literature, music can produce an emotion or a shift in emotion, sadness or absolute ecstasy; as much as literature, painting can generate amazement, a new look at the world. But only literature can give you this sensation of contact with another human mind, with the whole of this mind, its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with everything that moves this mind, interests it, excites it or repels it. Literature alone can allow you to get in touch with the spirit of a dead person, more directly, more fully and more deeply than would the same conversation with a friend — however profound, however lasting a friendship may be, never does one reveal oneself, in a conversation, as fully as is done in front of a blank sheet when writing to an unknown recipient. Michel Houellebecq, Soumission, Flammarion, Paris, page 13 [my translation]
On Wednesday evening, I felt I needed to read something other than a newspaper on my way back to Lausanne. As I could not find Magazine Littéraire in either of the two newsagents I went in at Cornavin railway station, I decided to try my luck at Payot after I had caught sight of the bookshop’s name on the escalator leading to the trains – after all, I had not yet set foot in the new outlet of what is now a totally independent and locally owned bookshop chain and I felt that if I had to spend money on literature I might as well give them my business (rather than have it go to a foreign group owned by some billionaire). Among the books displayed prominently on the wall just opposite the entrance, I spotted several copies of Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel, ‘Submission’, published only a fortnight earlier. I bought the novel, I read it on the train, then on the métro and finally at home. I finished it a couple of hours later.
The subject matter is simply incendiary: ‘Submission’ (or ‘Soumission’ in French) describes the life of a disillusioned and promiscuous university lecturer in French literature, François, against the backdrop of the rise to the country’s presidency of a ‘moderate Muslim’ [sic in the text], Mohammed Ben Abbes, through a Socialist-Muslim Brotherhood alliance. The country’s secular school system is Islamised and the new president quickly launches a Mare Nostrum policy. After a failed attempt to renew with his Christian roots during a brief stay at a monastery, François, in order to reintegrate university teaching and to continue to be able to enjoy young flesh, decides to convert to Islam at the very end of the novel, hence the title ‘Submission’.
Although I closed the book with a faint feeling of nausea, as the ending of ‘Submission’ somehow reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 in that both François and Winston Smith ‘willingly’ submit to the forces of totalitarianism, I nevertheless enjoyed the way in which the plot of the novel parallels the spiritual quest of the 19th century French author Joris-Karl Huysmans, on which François wrote his doctoral thesis and to whom he constantly refers throughout ‘Submission’. More than that, and so as to steer away from any controversial issues and thus move to a less depressing topic, I simply loved the fact that literary scholarship is another important theme in the novel, even though Michel Houellebecq uses it as kind of cautionary note that there is no escaping politics, even for those who feel safe in their ivory tower…
I have used the word ‘scholarship’ rather than ‘academic life’ because of the former’s etymological connection with the Latin word ‘schola’, itself derived from the Greek term ‘skholē’. Given that Latin was the language of the Roman church, which set up the first schools in the Middle Ages (after the disappearance of their equivalents in the Roman and Greek worlds with the disintegration of the Roman empire), the Latin word ‘schola’ ended up being used to describe this institution in most European languages: ‘école’ (French), ‘Schule’ (German), ‘scuola’ (Italian), ‘escuela’ (Spanish), ‘escola’ (Portuguese), etc. Incidentally, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Houellebecq’s quasi double in ‘taedium vitae’ (weariness of life), was well versed in Latin and its literature:
[…] I prefer the language of the Vulgate* to the language of the age of August, or even to the Latin of the Decadent Period, however more intriguing I find it with its smell of cooked waterfowl and its parsley shades of venison. To me, the Church, which, after having disinfected and rejuvenated Latin, created, to deal with an order of hitherto unexpressed ideas, grandiloquent vocables and diminutives of exquisite tenderness, seems to have fashioned itself a language far superior to the dialect of Paganism[…].
Preface to Joris-Karl Huysmans’s novel Against the Grain [À rebours], which he wrote 20 years after the novel was first published [my translation; the text in French is available here.]
The cult of instant gratification so prevalent in our times, whether it is achieved through watching televised sport, through a voyeuristic prying into flesh-flashing celebrities or, in a quasi Pavlovian fashion, as a result of the notification that somebody has liked one of our comments or pictures on social media, certainly seems at odd with the calm and patience one would associate with the reading of literature or the pursuit of literary scholarship.
As is the compiling of dictionaries of medieval Latin, a language which had been at the heart of the Christian West for so many centuries, by a group of British enthusiasts over nearly a century:
On this point, I would certainly agree with Mr Houellebecq that the West is nearing its demise, being so infatuated with the present, being so oblivious of its own cultural traditions and achievements.
* revised version of the Bible produced by St Jerome based on the original texts as well as on his revisions of the texts translated into Latin from Greek; more here.
Links to (mostly positive) reviews of Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission:
[Please note that links to the Internet Archive may take a minute or two to download.]
‘One person’s freedom [of expression] ends where another’s begins.’
Some posts do not age well at all. Blog posts are like the words we say to people in conversations and there are times when we wish we had not said a particular sentence or a particular string of sentences to somebody. Similarly there are posts which we wish we had not written and certainly not published. Yet I am NOT going to delete this post. I am not going to do so because I believe that there is some educational value in leaving it online: it will serve as an example of what happens when one decides not to exercise one’s critical thinking and when one thus leaves one’s mind (and soul) at the mercy of highly manipulative and dark forces bent on sowing dissension and strife between the religious faiths and on fuelling hatred so as to justify the chaos that they are bringing upon the Middle East.
The languages are different, but the titles are almost identical; this can only mean that the same ‘phenomenon’ is taking place in various countries…
Although I came to realise this in full and earnest only in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks of 13th November 2015 (with the ensuing unleashing of government propaganda in various countries in favour of military intervention in Iraq), I understood really for the first time that some were pursuing a dark and evil agenda when I attended a conference given by a famous French science fiction author on 5th September 2015 during which this author said that he believed in the ‘clash of civilisations’ – incidentally, a topic which had nothing to do with the conference.
On Thursday 3rd March 2016, I stumbled across the last piece of the Houellebecq jigsaw as far as I am concerned when I spotted in a municipal library a leaflet announcing a colloquium on that author at the University of Lausanne. Because I now consider Mr Houellebecq to be part of the professional Islamophobia industry which is helping to bring about the dark, evil and hidden agenda I mentioned above, I was so shocked that the University of Lausanne had accepted to associate itself with this agenda – whether wittingly or not. Once home, I decided to find out whether the decision might in any way be construed as having been unwitting on the part of the university by looking up the prevalence of the association of Houellebecq and Islamophobia (by typing Houellebecq and islamophobie on Startpage.com).
This yielded two very interesting articles, one in French [the link provided is to the article saved at the Internet Archive], the other in English. Even more telling than the name of Mr Houellebecq’s literary agent or than some of the views this author has expressed regarding events in the Middle East was the fact that Mr Houellebecq published in 2008 a book based on the correspondence he had exchanged with somebody who is nothing else than a war criminal (based on the latter’s highly pro-active, almost unrelenting support for French military intervention in Libya). I even stumbled across an article (written by a former university professor [the link provided is to the article saved at the Internet Archive]) picking up on the coincidence of the date of publication of Mr Houellebecq’s novel, the front page cover of that week’s issue of Charlie Hebdo and the attack against that magazine…
As a result, I am now convinced that Mr Houellebecq is part of a long tradition of carefully designed provocations aimed at eliciting anger, public demonstrations with ideally bouts of violence from very fervent and especially flammable Muslims so as to create a very bad impression of Islam in the minds of non-Muslims in the West (Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses [the link provided is to the article saved at the Internet Archive], Flemming Rose’s Jyllands Posten cartoons, Charlie Hebdo’s multiple provocations against Islam and Muslims, etc). In turn, this helps to quell any moral qualms Westerners may harbour as to their governments’ endless, highly bloody and particularly devastating military interventions in the Middle East.
Given the all-pervasive propaganda against Islam and the Arabic world in Western media (a French author has amply documented this for the French television for a period of thirty years – see the picture below), it is all too easy to submit to the quasi Pavlovian responses some are trying to elicit from us. The real issue then, dear reader, should therefore be more as follows: ‘to submit or not to submit to this Machiavellian and particularly evil propaganda that is being manufactured for us by our media, that is the question’.
[Le Monde of 7 January, Libération 8 January 2015]
Of course, it would be too easy to want to contrast Houellebecq with Charb (one of the cartoonists killed at Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday), who said in an interview two years ago that he would rather ‘stand up and die than live on his knees’ (source: Le Monde of 7 January). My point here is that people who like me had taken freedom of speech as something for granted in our societies will now have to reconsider their assumption.
Although I would point out that, in France, freedom of speech was probably killed some years ago, in 1993-94, when rehearsals for the staging of Voltaire’s play Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète, at Ferney-Voltaire, near Geneva were cancelled, so that the play (which had been scheduled for the tricentenary of the playwright’s birth) was scrapped (source: Michel Renard ‘Tariq Ramadan et Voltaire : pièces pour un dossier’). The irony of course was that Voltaire was instrumental to the setting up of freedom of speech in France and elsewhere in Europe:
I am deeply shocked that several people were killed in cold blood because of cartoons published in a magazine three years ago:
[Charlie Hebdo, 2 Nov 2011]
I was deeply shocked when I heard that somebody I vaguely knew was killed in a terrorist attack in Luxor in 1997; I still feel sad whenever I see a picture of the coffins of the Swiss citizens who were killed there in that attack.
I was so shocked at how white a colleague (when I worked in Zurich) was when I saw her in our office the Monday after the Mumbai terrorist attacks (she had been attending a conference in the very hotel where it all happened) that I was unable to muster the courage to go to her desk and extend some words of sympathy to her — I still regret my ‘cowardice’.
I am still shocked at the number of car/lorry crashes (and even shootings) that killed people just before Christmas here in Europe and, of course, at some of the terrible mass killings which took place elsewhere.