This edited volume is an inquiry into the representation of intimate relationships in a diverse array of media including cinema, arts, literature, picture books, advertising and popular music. It examines artistic portrayal of intimate relationships as a subversion of the boundaries between the representable and the non-representable, the real and the surreal, the visceral and the ideal, the embodied and the abstracted, the configured and transfigured. The essays focus on artistic mediation of intimacy in diverse relationships, including heterosexual, same-sex, familial, sibling' , political, and sadomasochistic. The collection offers new interdisciplinary and multicultural perspectives on current trends in the study of popular representations of intimacy; representations that affect and formulate people's most personal inspirations, desires, angsts, dreams and nightmares in an increasingly alienated, industrialized world.

Michel Houellebecq posits himself as an officer of civilization, offering a map of contemporary reality and according literature a substantial role in the field of public involvement. His unique style problematizes contemporary cultural processes and deconstructs the aesthetic and ideological thought-habits that design the collective imaginary of our era. As such, this book seeks to analyze the particularities of Houellebecq's poetics in the context of literary tradition, intertextual relations, psycho-cultural aspects and social semiotics, alongside contacts with the contemporary field of art. The author focuses on Houellebecq's poetical differentia specifica, the unique and innovative intersection between the cooperation with transnational capitalism and the resentment toward ignorant indulgence in it. This book reads Houellebecq as both iconoclastic and subversive and at the same time as a commodity in the literary marketplace and shows how his narratives are harnessed for the purposes of activism in the service of engaged impact.

This edited volume is an inquiry into the representation of intimate relationships in a diverse array of media including cinema, arts, literature, picture books, advertising and popular music. It examines artistic portrayal of intimate relationships as a subversion of the boundaries between the representable and the non-representable, the real and the surreal, the visceral and the ideal, the embodied and the abstracted, the configured and transfigured. The essays focus on artistic mediation of intimacy in diverse relationships, including heterosexual, same-sex, familial, sibling' , political, and sadomasochistic. The collection offers new interdisciplinary and multicultural perspectives on current trends in the study of popular representations of intimacy; representations that affect and formulate people's most personal inspirations, desires, angsts, dreams and nightmares in an increasingly alienated, industrialized world.