“Ich stecke bis zum Hals in meinem Scheitern” Writing as Self-Annihilation in Winter’s Journey by Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek’s play Winter’s Journey, like all of Jelinek’s work, is strongly influenced by the Austrian tradition of language criticism. Jelinek’s writing bears witness to both a visceral distrust of the possible perversions of discourse and a radical confidence in its power to unveil and fight. Jelinek works against the language she uses, she kneads and twists it, but also expands and emancipates it.