Webs of Entanglement
Complicity and Memorialization in Elfriede Jelinek's Die Kinder der Toten
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9855451 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alyssa Claire Greene (Columbia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 89 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 399-418 |
| Publication date | 2014-10-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Germanic Review Literature Culture Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-8890 • E-ISSN: 1930-6962 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00168890.2014.974491 |
| OpenAlex | W2018673134 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 23 |
This article examines the ways in which Elfriede Jelinek's 1995 horror novel, Die Kinder der Toten, confronts Austria's complicity in the Holocaust and challenges contemporary efforts to memorialize its victims. It concentrates on one figure in particular: an animated, monstrous web of hair [Haargespinst]. The Haargespinst serves as a metonym for the victims and becomes the vehicle by means of which the dead avenge themselves on the living. The Haargespinst furthermore enacts a critique of memorial spaces, particularly the museum at Auschwitz. In addition to discussing its function within the text, the article argues that the Haargespinst illuminates the poetics of the novel as a whole, helping make sense of its complicated narratorial positions, its use of generic tropes and clichés, and its critique of memory discourses around the Holocaust. Taking the Haargespinst as a point of departure, the article argues that Jelinek's social criticism and self-conscious narration make Die Kinder der Toten a work of literature in the tradition of the postwar counter-monument. Instead of eliciting an emotional response, the novel provokes and unsettles, demanding a critical examination of memorial practices as well as conventional notions of guilt and innocence. Finally, the article reflects on the more problematic aspects of the novel's use of tropes
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Complicity · Criticism · Innocence · Literature · Memorialization · Narrative · Poetics · Poetry · Posthumanism · Psychoanalysis · The Holocaust · German History and Society · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology
Skin Shows
When Victims Become Killers
Powers of Horror
Ghostly Matters
'Hitler's First Victim'? — Memory and Representation in Post-War Austria
The Politics of Recognition
Men, Women, and Chain Saws
The Generation of Postmemory
Keepers of the Motherland
Unspeakable
Genocide and Social Death
Elfriede Jelinek's Die Kinder der Toten
The Literary and Cultural Rhetoric of Victimhood
Twilight Memories
Rethinking “After Auschwitz
Enlightenment or Entanglement
Schindler's List' Is Not 'Shoah
The Counter-Monument
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |