From the Sexual Revolution to the Identity Crisis in Houellebecq's Novels
The central theme of the contemporary French controversial author Michel Houellebecq
(1956) is the hopelessness and impossibility of modern male-female relationships.
As the son of a hippie mother, Houellebecq convincingly depicts the lasting psychological
damage to children growing up in neglectful male-female relationships. These damaged
children become deviant adults, resulting in numerous relationship problems. In his
works, Houellebecq focuses on current issues characteristic of French society and
the Western world in general, such as loneliness, incel identity, purposeless sexuality,
hippie identity, conscious and unintended childlessness, reproduction without sexuality
(e.g., cloning), workaholism, Islamic terrorism, islamization, and submission. Each
novel is set in a different environment and has various background stories, but the
central message remains similar: due to the new social and sexual norms created by
hippie culture, the sexual revolution, and liberal individualization, it becomes increasingly
difficult to live in a happy marriage and have children. The decline and fall of traditional
European marriage inevitably lead to the demographic decline and collapse of European
societies.
Keywords: hippie movement, sexual deviations, workaholism, islamization.
