something about "The Elementary Particles" by Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq's "The Elementary Particles" diagnosis society with irreversible decline brought on by failing social values and an addiction to the promises of technology and positivism. The social-sexual revolutions of the 1960s implanted an unwavering allegiance to individuality, and this in turn cost us community and the possibility of intimacy among friends and lovers. This trend coupled with cold, hard science pushed us all apart, leaving a developed world of lonely, desperate, frustrated people. Isolation, depression prevail.

This tale of shifting value systems is played out in the lives of half-brothers Michel and Bruno. Their mother was a sexually liberated woman who had no time or interest for children. Being an easy target for bullies, Bruno led a difficult childhood; Michel fared better, being brilliant but clearly withdrawn and romantically oblivious. Bruno grows into a sexually frustrated and obsessed adult, Michel into a molecular biologist. Late in life they each find a sad but redeeming relationship with women but even this last hurrah only underscores our doom--both women die, leaving the half-brothers half whole and forced to recollect the pieces of their already broken lives. Bruno finds not-unhappiness medicated in a sanitarium while Michel goes on to ensure the death of humanity by pioneering asexual reproduction.

Not a bad book. But I wouldn't call it good.

about "The Birth of Biopolitics", lectures by Michel Foucault

The lectures transcribed in The Birth of Biopolitics are the sequel to those in Security, Territory, and Population, a book I read in March. Neither book title really describes the content of the lectures, and this is especially true of the sequel. But Foucault acknowledges this; the mishap is apparently owed to poor planning.

Now, the lectures' original subject, biopolitics, is the governance of phenomenon related to life and population--families, birth rates, disease, hygiene, etc.--and this is with an understanding that governance takes many forms, that population is a kind of construct, that multiple powers are in play, and so on (Foucault qualifies almost compulsively). However, Liberalism provides the frame of reference for understanding biopolitics, so we first need to understand Liberalism. Hence, The Birth of Biopolitics actually explores Liberalism's philosophy and development in terms of tensions which Foucault calls relations of power (Liberalism here being understood as the limiting of government for maximum (economic) effect given the natural phenomenon of the market).

Reading, I was interested but still found the content dry. The Birth of Biopolitics doesn't have the kind of insights I normally look for and value with Foucault. This is more of a history and articulation of a political philosophy than anything else. Mostly, I enjoyed some early sections tracing the movements from governance under a wise sovereign guided by truths to the invocation of a market place and population policed by the state to the limiting of modern government in response to the police state. But, in all, the most lively section for me was Foucault's explication of Adam Smith's famous "invisible hand" metaphor.

Notes:

• I re-read Security, Territory, and Population before starting this one and it was worth it.