Modern life is still rubbish Houellebecq and the refiguring of `reactionary' retro

In 1998 Michel Houellebecq's novel Les Particules élémentaires provocatively sketched a causal link between the ills of modern-day society and the political legacy of May 1968. The author focused his critique primarily on the liberalization of sexual `mœurs', popularly seen as one of the few tangible achievements of May but denounced by Houellebecq as a pernicious determiner of social exclusion. The discourse used by Houellebecq to attack the legacy of `68 is not, however, altogether new; it finds expression in the popular media he both extols and denigrates in Les Particules élémentaires. Houellebecq uses comic-book art to evoke an idyllic faith in `pure', `universal' (pre-'68) values and the article traces a right-wing lineage for these `lost' moralities from children's comics of the 1960s back to the Vichy period. Highlighted also are similarities between Les Particules élémentaires and the anti-consumer culture ideology of the 1960s satirical magazine Hara-Kiri. The article pays particular attention to how both novel and magazine communicate disaffection through a nihilist discourse characterized by taboo-breaking caricature. Finally Houellebecq's depiction of the 1968 generation as dysfunctional and deluded can be seen in new social comment emerging in French cartoon art of the 1970s and 1980s.