Writing as Violence and Counter-Violence in Paul Celan’s Poetry and Elfriede Jelinek’s Prose

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My ambition is to show, by way of close reading, how Celan’s poem “Todesfuge” (1945) and Jelinek’s novel Die Klavierspielerin (1983) both mirror and subvert the violence that they are up against; Celan’s poem by mirroring the cruel alliance between violence and beauty; Jelinek’s prose by arranging collisions between the discourses that she cites. In order to prove this point I call on Walter Benjamin's distinction between mythic and divine violence, Slavoj Zizek's point that "language is the first and greatest divider", and Eric Santner's and Georges Didi-Huberman's (divergent) concepts of "incarnation". I show how incarnation is at work in Celan’s verses and Jelinek’s prose—as an incarnation of the subject, as a materialization of the signifier, as the violence inherent in language and as violence against signifying language, and even as a theme.


Original languageDanish
Title of host publicationThe Aesthetics of Violence
EditorsHans Jacob Ohldieck, Gisle Selnes
PublisherScandinavian Academic Press
Publication date2020
Pages155-182
ISBN (Print)978-82-304-0295-5
Publication statusPublished - 2020

ID: 255986573