Abstract: The Goncourt Prize novel of Michel Houellebecq focuses on the parable of a fictional artist, Jed Martin, whose production ranges from photos of road maps to videos on manufactured products’ degradation, via portraits of people representing jobs. The Map and the Territory (2010) ends with a representation of the total triumph of vegetation in a future world museifing the first industrial age. One of the great questionings of aesthetic evaluation criteria is linked to the rise of popular literature, that some intellectuals considerate as a form...
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