SOURCE: Szalay, Eva Ludwiga. “Of Gender and the Gaze: Constructing the Disease(d) in Elfriede Jelinek's Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen.” German Quarterly 74, no. 3 (summer 2001): 237-58.

In the following essay, Szalay investigates the influence of the theories of French philosopher Michel Foucault on Jelinek's Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen.

Weiβt du, einer sagt, die Geschichte beruhe in letzter Instanz auf dem Körper des Menschen.¹

In staging what might be called the symbolically or metaphorically diseased condition of modern women, Elfriede Jelinek's Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen sets out to radically deconstruct the integral body, identity, and language. In the above quote, one of the play's main figures alludes to Foucault's compelling notion that history ultimately rests on the human body. That Jelinek's play would allude to Foucault is hardly surprising, since his analytics of power and processes of subjection offer feminist poststructuralists a useful framework for conceptualizing the body...