The Failed Asabiyya and Cultural Suicide in Michel Houellebecq’s Submission

This article identifies the correspondences that Ibn Khaldun’s concepts of asabiya, mulk and dynasty have in Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 novel Submission. It analyses work a contemporary author through method sketched out by Muslim scholar 14th century, thereby provincializing European text, showing continuities cultural thought Mediterranean. While putting role asabiya at centre, deploys Dipesh Chakrabarty’s understanding provincialization, Fernand Braudel’s concept encounters In Submission, Houellebecq describes France which candidate has become president. As perceived source Western culture, Mediterranean uncanny, novels reflect this uneasy relationship between continent basin. narrator reflects how decline its apparent suicide is due to lack solidarity classes, White French people are very quick adopt ways Maghrebi immigrants, how, ultimately, immigrants who now power will suffer same loss vitality as their predecessors. These observations comply with cyclical social behaviour Khaldun mapped Muqaddimah.