Réseaux du bien et du mal Infrastructures fictives de Michel Houellebecq

A recurrent preoccupation in the work of Michel Houellebecq is infrastructure, whether consisting of nineteenth-century transport and administrative networks underpinning a national territory, or modern day electronic networks. The former are presented in a positive light ; the latter, despite their unprecedented presence in all areas of social life, succeed only in disconnecting human beings. The network is thus for Houellebecq a means of establishing the ideological problematics of his work.