La libido réactionnaire? The recent fiction of J. G. Ballard

Abstract

This essay addresses the question of whether the contemporary British writer J. G. Ballard is reactionary. It uses the work of the psychoanalytic thinker Slavoj Žižek to analyse the ways in which his recent fiction, the novels Cocaine Nights (1996), Super-Cannes (2000), Millennium People (2003) and Kingdom Come (2006), poses disturbing questions concerning order, community and transgression within contemporary capitalist society. The analysis traces the shifting and ambiguous political e fects of Ballard's attempts to provide warnings concerning emergent cultural pathologies. This leads to an examination of how Ballard puts the generic conventions of contemporary fiction under pressure by his subversion of the crime/thriller novel. The conclusion focuses on the relative lack of controversy aroused by Ballard's provocative fiction in Britain.