ABSTRACT
Any comparison between the Austrian playwrights Elfriede Jelinek and Werner Werner Schwab is bound to be as instructive as it is asymmetrical. The ‘shooting star’ and self-styled ‘enfant terrible’ Schwab, who emerged from obscurity to meteoric fame in early 1990s. Schwab’s plays have sometimes been described as postmodern punk theatre – band Einstürzende Neubauten being an important influence – whereas Elfriede Jelinek’s playwriting has often been associated primarily with her feminist, anti-fascist, and anti-capitalist political engagement. In their shared focus on manipulating language in order to defamiliarise perception, Schwab and Jelinek stand in strong Austrian tradition of language critique associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Fritz Mauthner, and Karl Kraus, who all explored the inextricable connection between language, thought, and perception. Jelinek kept on pursuing themes of Austria’s and Germany’s national socialist past and its legacy, neo-fascism and right-wing populism in many of her subsequent plays, yet moved away from using the Volkstheater genre – and increasingly from the dramatic form altogether.
