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MyTH, INTERCULTURALITY, AND RELIGION IN ELFRIEDE JELINEK’S AND FALK RICHTER’S WORK... more than receptive viewers. “Say it” thus leads to an interrupted call and response, where the audience is being yelled at: a longed-for actor that (unfortunately) stays silent. Instead, it is the King that speaks. And in this king’s speech, the speaker states, the King becomes his own religion. This is a performative contradiction, since, at least within the text, the King will never speak, he is merely spoken about and accused of depriving the world of meaningful structures, such as religion." "You" may give up on your own beliefs, it is merely the belief system of the King that counts. And the King’s God, in whose word he and thus you as well should believe, is no one but the King himself. He is then associated with economic structures. If you do not consider capital, do not consider the King, you will be lost. “Consider the economy” is a phrase that rather haunts us these days while we are trapped by a global pandemic that tethers people to their homes and slows down the markets: self-isolation is important, we hear, but what will these weeks, months even, do to our economy? “Consider the economy!” But, luckily, for most people it is much easier to consider the lives of their grandparents than it is to consider an abstract entity such as the economy. This is why the economy is immediately identified as unimaginable, inconceivable — one cannot make an image of it, which is why, of course, we need models and metaphors to understand it by.” But here, the economy is thus linked to the aniconism debate, that has been and is still discussed in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism alike. “Capital” becomes too big, too omnipotent to be imagined in anything but metaphors. That also means one would have to believe in capital rather than it being perceptible to the senses,” thus echoing the conflict that apostle Thomas had when asking Jesus to show him his wounds: Believing is not seeing.*? A capitalist belief system though, is not explored further here. What is imaginable and conceivable are the new farright tendencies Jelinek is eager to call into the consciousness of the audience in all their liminal** varieties in her play. At the forefront of the new far-right movement stands the King, who is identified as a xenophobic hate speaker. Capital, as well as the King, in his monotheistic worldview, which accepts no It is a different matter on stage, where the King, brilliantly portrayed by Benny Claessens, of course does speak. 21 | refer, of course, to William Lakoff - Mark Johnson: Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1980 and Wolfgang Braungart’s addition to the concept: Wolfgang Braungart: Asthetik der Politik, Asthetik des Politischen. Ein Versuch in Thesen, Gottingen, Wallstein, 2012. 2 Sigmund Freud: Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion, Frankfurt a. M., Fischer, 1975. 23 Jn. 25:29. I refer to the concept of liminality in current performative studies that itself has its origins in Victor Turner’s study of rituality. Matthias Warstadt: Liminalität, in E. Fischer-Lichte — D. Kolesch — M. Warstat (eds.): Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart/Weimar, Metzler, 2005, 186-187.
