Meike's Reviews > Lust

Nobel Prize for Literature 2004
I'm REALLY struggling with the works of Austria's first Nobel laureate for literature, but that's exactly what this author intends: Jelinek is a literary radical, and I applaud her for that. "Lust" is a relentless, cynical pamphlet against male violence against women, which correlates gender relations with capitalist exploitation dynamics. Loosely revolving around the plight of a woman married to the director of a paper mill in the Austrian province, we get an endless, repetitive array of oral, vaginal, and anal rape scenes illustrating chains of dependency and power. I know that Jelinek is famous for her word play, but I often find her tricks, sorry to say, idiotic and annoying, and as this is literature driven by (justified!) rage, there is no nuance, which is, I see that, the whole point. Do I like it? No.

BUT (and now I'm arguing with myself, which is part of the merit of this text): Jelinek, while thankfully still alive and well, is an author that has to be perceived in historical context. Born in 1946, she is a representative of second-wave feminism, which does not only explain that there is no awareness of intersectionality, but Jelinek and her peers were pioneers when it comes to talking about domestic abuse and marital rape, so they often took a, let's say, undercomplex stance, because they were operating from a subaltern position and wanted to be heard. "Lust" was first published in 1989, the year marital rape became illegal in Austria. I stand behind a lot of the criticism third-wave feminists hold against the second wave, especially its blindness regarding gender identity as a spectrum and its sex-negative attitudes that work against female sexual liberation, but since reading Andrea Dworkin's Mercy, I have a better idea of where they were coming from (I still strongly disagree with Dworkin on many issues).

So yes, Jelinek is not here to present us with topics like intersectional solidarity, female sexual liberation, the negative effects of toxic masculinity on men (shout out to Klaus Theweleit), or toxic femininity (I see you, Sophia Fritz), and that's why in a way, her texts are outdated, but also represent a stage in a process. Fortunately for me, this type of second-wave discourse frequently tends to feel bizarre to me, but yesterday, I found a TV snippet that features German literary and cultural icon Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the most famous German-language literary critic ever, and he and his male colleagues are pondering how "Lust", this explosion of disgust and misogyny, illustrates male lust (because men get off on torturing their wives???), denounces sexuality as such (rape is not a form of sexuality, it's a form of violence), and one of these geniuses even upholds that the wife is okay with it, which is a Freudian misreading beyond my comprehension. Broadcast in 1989. If you hate yourself enough to watch it, here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py75C...

Elfriede, I'm starting to get your outrageous aesthetic choices, I'm starting to understand your boundless anger. It's just that I'm a third-wave feminist who longs for more nuance.