How to Delay the End of the World?: Posthumanist Vision and Re-connection with Life in Cyclonopedia and Hotel Western Xia via The Possibility of an Island
Resource
中外文學, 45(1), 013-043
中外文學, 45(1), 013-043
Journal
中外文學
Journal Volume
45
Journal Issue
1
Pages
13-43
Date Issued
2016-03
Date
2016-03
Author(s)
Abstract
In Houellebecq’s most recent novel The Possibility of an Island, he once
again plays with his ambivalence toward life by exposing the futility of love/
sex and for that matter death, thereby adumbrating a prolonged doomsday
through a dystopic rendering of the cult of technology. But two other novels,
Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani, an Iranian American writer, and Hotel Western
Xia by Yi-jun Luo, a Taiwanese writer, help modify this vision by laying
bare what is lacking in its foundation: an impossibility to feel the Real (as
defined by Lacan) or Life (as defined by Deleuze). Apocalyptical though
they both seem, these two novels present dark visions with hints of potential
redemption. In approximating the doomsday prophecy even further because
of their having had direct contact with the Real or Life, that raw force which
underlies human existence, they both have arrived at the realization of the
need to re-negotiate the Symbolic and the Real, the human and the nonhuman.
Only an active engagement with the Real or Life can lead us away
from a thorough nihilism or for that matter complete destruction of the world
we have been living in, imperfect as it is.
Subjects
拉崗
德勒茲
衛勒別克
《風暴之書》
《西夏旅館》
真實
生命
末日
洞孔空間
Lacan
Deleuze
Houellebecq
Cyclonopedia
Hotel Western Xia
the Real
Life
doomsday
holey space
Type
journal article
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