Introduction to “Parasitic Drama”. Mechanisms of theatricality in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns / The Merchant’s Contracts

Abstract

In this paper, we present a critical exposition on the play Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns, by Elfriede Jelinek, which aims to present the literary composition principles used by the writer in his proposition of a "parasitical drama". Concurrently, we will seek to retrieve the set of contextual references that precedes that dramatization. For this purpose, we will start by exposing the play's incubation context, then moving to the introduction of the author’s ironic and parodic approach on the market’s legitimization and naturalization mechanisms and its financial operations, in particular by econometric metaphysics and the media’s common sense. On a third point, we will present the specifically literary procedures by which the writer reveals the logic of the capitalist economy as a regime of bodies’ annihilation. Finally, we summarize the writer’s intention of using the theater as a viewers activation device by way of “horror”.