Introducing Elfriede Jelinek: Double agent of feminist aesthetics

Abstract

A dominant trend in West German feminist fiction has been toward the first person narrative, sometimes called the ‘new tear-jerker’ and derided as ‘belly-button gazing’ because the heroine is entirely preoccuped with herself and the damage she has suffered under male dominance. This confessional mode can be likened to the Chinese tradition of ‘speaking bitterness’ and has the same intimate purpose, to cleanse the writer of destructive emotions by documenting the struggle of a woman under patriarchy to achieve her private revolution, that is, to free herself. Contrasting with this exemplary individualism, the novels, drama, and radio plays of Austrian Marxist and feminist Elfriede Jelinek emphasize not the exception but the norm. Jelinek eschews individuals in preference for types representing a certain class and upbringing. As the non-heroic average, they are static rather than dynamic. Not portrayed as agents of change, they are instead impotent victims of the Media Establishment's control. This does not mean that the socialist has abandoned her belief in revolution; rather, it implies that literature, as a vehicle of enlightenment, is in her view better suited to exaggerating the difficulties of the struggle than to trivializing or underestimating them. The consequences of this for her style are clear: she parodies the consciousness industry, unmasking its role in preventing change.