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MyTH, INTERCULTURALITY, AND RELIGION IN ELFRIEDE JELINEK’S AND FALK RICHTER’S WORK...
justifying xenophobic tendencies within societies before he crucifies himself.
He therefore sacrifices himself — a narrative that will conclude Jelinek’s play
later — for the supposed good of the many. Then, his words are repeated in
American English by an actor dressed up as an orientalist icon — in glittery
harem pants, with a huge black moustache and a turban — and thus perform¬
ing hate speech as a globalized affair, as a universal threat that is constructed
within a hegemonistic system.
To understand Jelinek’s debate of myth, belief, history, and xenophobia, one
has to consider one of the most distinguished poetical principles of her oeuvre:
the work on (at times called “deconstruction” or even “destruction” of) myths.”
Jelinek first revealed her fascination with Roland Barthes’ Mythologies® in her
1980 essay Die endlose Unschuldigkeit [The endless innocence]. Alongside the
psychoanalytical notion of myth, to understand Jelinek’s use of the phenom¬
enon, one needs to reflect on what Barthes defines as myths: Myth, he says, is
a means of conversation, is meaning, thus not objective language but rather
form. As a result, everything can become myth, which is why Barthes in the
first part of Mythologies analyzes and dissects so-called “trivial myths”: from
beefsteak and French fries, to advertisements, sexuality, sport events, and ac¬
tors: Myths are identified as a secondary system of semiology, a metalinguistic
system. In doing this, Barthes asks the mythologist to deconstruct the myth
as form and therefore expose its implied ideologies that appear innocent and
are normalized in society: “myth transforms history into nature.”*! Myth,
Barthes continues, “steals from language” as it deforms it and makes use of
it to maintain ideologies. Jelinek, in turn, steals from myth, deforms it, and
makes use of it: not to politick, Uta Degner observes, but to use it as a poetic
principle, seen in her montage-style writing.” Am Kénigsweg plays with myths
in even narrower terms than Barthes uses and is obvious in her referencing
of the Oedipal myth. The text exposes nationalism and (mythical) icons such
as Trump, or, with the help of Falk Richter’s production, the “Alt Right”, links
them to pop-cultural and religious discourses and finds, in its last words of
hopefulness, a rather optimistic tone.
Jelinek’s play ends in a state of failed communication, in paragraphs that,
due to their word play, are especially difficult to translate:
Sollen wir dem König Opfer bringen, weil Gott sie nicht haben will? [...] Aller Groll,
aller Haß, alles, was sich eigentlich schön auf Sie alle verteilen sollte, all das richtet
® Ulrike Degner: Mythendekonstruktion, in P. Janke (ed.): Jelinek Handbuch, 41-46; Marlies
Janz: Elfriede Jelinek, Stuttgart/Weimar, Metzler, 1995, and Christa Gürtler (ed.): Gegen den
schönen Schein. Texte zu Elfriede Jelinek, Frankfurt a. M., Neue Kritik, 1990.
50 Roland Barthes: Mythologies, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1957.
>! Barthes: Mythologies, 237.
52 Degner: Mythendekonstruktion, 45.
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