European dystopias/utopias in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Submission: Part I (2004) and Michel Houellebecq’s Submission (2015)

Abstract

This comparative analysis examines two instances of dystopian/utopian narratives and media – the film and script Submission: Part I (2004) by the Dutch-Somalian but naturalized American author Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the novel Submission (2015) by the French author Michel Houellebecq. These two works challenge the project of Europe as a bastion of liberal ideals and its various markers, including laïcité, universalism and human rights, through narratives informed by cultural pessimism and religious and racial dystopia. Fantasies of race, ethnicity and empire pervade the fictional Islamistan in Submission I as well as Houellebecq’s narrative exploring the conversion of French society to Islam. Whereas Submission: Part I has been hailed for addressing Muslim abuse and Houellebecq’s novel has been cited often as a trigger of Islamophobia, I argue that both works merit new interpretations when read in relation to historical fears of ethnic and religious Muslim Others in postcolonial presents: Submission: Part I as contributing to the Islamic problem it supposedly addressed, with Houellebecq offering a nuanced and sympathetic understanding of the Muslim ‘Other’ that acknowledges the significance of Arab/Muslim France to the French Republic.