Australian Journal of French Studies

Abstract

Michel Houellebecq has always been a contested person. Throughout his career the identity of the author relative to the works has been under scrutiny. In 2014 this tendency reached a peak, when no less than two works entitled The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq claimed to have seized the author, both taking their cue from the author’s disappearance during the promotion tour of La Carte et le territoire. This article explores the relationship between Houellebecq’s literary and artistic strategies and these peripheral adaptations, asking whether works like these are the result of a new relationship between art forms in an intermedial world and/or if they are the offspring of a particular performative form of writing developed through Houellebecq’s ɶuvre.