In the midst of the suicide of the West, it was clear they didn't stand a chance

This essay reads Michel Houellebecq's 2015 novel, Soumission within the context of the current political crisis in France, which is read as a crisis of Western neoliberalism, by tracing a critique of sexual-economic liberalism as 'regime of desire' that has run throughout the last two decades of Houellebecq's oeuvre. It argues that Soumission represents a culmination of Houellebecq's project, as it moves beyond critique of contemporary liberalism into a speculative account of how we might live beyond the historical malaise liberalism has bequeathed us: the metaphysical principle of 'submission.'