Social and Discursive Capital as Illiberal Enabler: A Tale of Two Far‐Right Fictions in France

Abstract

There is a growing body of scholarship examining the circulation of illiberal ideas. While the majority of approaches have centered on political culture, we instead explore how such ideas manifest themselves in domains not traditionally viewed as overtly political, such as novels and works of fiction. We take two examples from the French literary scene: The Camp of the Saints, written by Jean Raspail in 1973, and Submission, written by Michel Houellebecq in 2015. Both works incorporate great replacement theory into their narratives, but while Raspail's novel generally belongs to fringe far-right literature, Houellebecq's has achieved widespread media and commercial success, establishing the author as a leading figure in contemporary French literature. We hypothesise that this discrepancy can be explained through the differing levels of social and discursive capital employed by the two authors. We argue that practices of illiberal diffusion encompass the entirety of the author's "posture," which includes both rhetorical or intra-textual practices (that is, how ideas are formulated within the text to align with prevailing norms), as well as instrumental or extra-textual practices (that is, how authors secure favorable reception by controlling external factors, such as media coverage or institutional networks). This broader lens provides a more nuanced understanding of how political ideas circulate within society.