TTW9 Paper 4 Critical Quotes

Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler, double oppression

Brigitte and Paula are shown to be at the mercy of the double-headed beast spawned by the alliance of patriarchy and capitalism

Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler, female solidarity

Female solidarity is neither depicted among the characters nor explicitly courted in the female reader.

Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler, female and male desire

Men’s sexuality is symbolised positively, if ironically, while women’s desire is left unfigured.

Adorno, negative dialectics

alienation is not just a product of capitalism but all-pervasive in modern life

Friedrich Engels

for women, paid employment is the first stage in their emancipation

Luce Irigaray

women, like commodities, have no intrinsic or permanent value in a patriarchal society, but only have value in that they can be exchanged.

Brigid Haines and Margret Littler, Jelinek’s realism

Jelinek’s realism does not reflect the surface ‘reality’ in order to bring forth maximum recognition, but rather, shatters the surface of this reality through exaggeration and excess.

Brigid Haines and Margret Littler, use of cliches

Use of cliches draws our attention to the petrification and consequent inauthenticity of language, as well as the consequent limitations of the truth function.

Allyson Fiddler, Jelinek’s realism

Jelinek’s project is to expose the way in which patterns of oppression are masked by the ruling ideology of patriarchal capitalism and represented as immutable facts about the "natural" world'

Allyson Fiddler, ‘satirical anti-romance’

By constructing a parody of romantic fiction, Jelinek’s intention is to show that marriage is based, not on altruistic love and sexual equality, but on the exploitation and subjugation of women.

Marlies Janz, female objectification

sie vermarkten ihre Körper, sei es als Arbeitskraft, sei es als Sexualobjekt und Gebärinstrument

John Locke, personhood

an individual is personally identical with someone at an earlier time, if the later individual can remember as his or her own the experiences of the earlier.

Descartes, personhood

only human beings have the linguistic ability to express thoughts, and act with rational deliberation

Kevin Sweeney, personhood

the rational conscious self (on the Lockean-Cartesian model) loses its status as sole “pilot,” and a new motivating agency exercises control.

Michael Rowe, personal identity

As a result of both self-perception and perception of others, the person experiences the “spoiled identity” of the stigmatized.

Michael Rowe, humanity and capitalism

Gregor’s humanity is inextricably tied to his function as economic provider.

Vladmir Nabakov, the window

Gregor, or Kafka, seems to think that Gregor’s urge to approach the window was a recollection of human experience when it is actually a typical insect reaction to light.

Vladmir Nabakov, Gregor’s goodness

It should be noted how kind, how good our poor little monster is.

Nina Pelikan Straus, Grete and Gregor

Grete's role as a woman unfolds as Gregor's life as a man collapses into itself.

Nina Pelikan Straus, shame

Shame comes from seeing oneself through another's eyes

Joseph Margolis, moral systems

Kafka’s tale confounds all oversimplified moral systems

Joseph Margolis, humanity

he is and is not human and insect

Scott Abbott, language

Gregor’s loss of human status reveals a social structure established and enforced by the German language.

Peter Bowman, lover’s happiness

the lovers renounce their happiness rather than fight a system to which they remain beholden

Peter Bowman, Botho’s love as a fantasy

He imagines that his propensity to fall in love with such a woman is innate, but the role of cultural influences in directing his emotions is clear from his roseate impression of Lene’s milieu.

Peter Bowman, sentimalisation

As Botho idealizes Lene, so he sentimentalizes their love.

Peter Bowman, aristocratic convention

His desire to escape from aristocratic convention is itself an aristocratic convention.

Brian Tucker, Botho idealization

Botho evinces a tendency to idealize and aestheticize quotidian life, to perceive it as being more romantic and idyllic than it actually is.

Patricia Howe, unions

What is desirable in the world of the imagination might be a union of Lene and Botho, but in the real world it is a union of Kathe and Botho.

Brian Tucker, ossification language

the “ossified life-style of the Prussian nobility, trapped by social convention and outmoded class arrogance” stands between Botho and more serious forms of communication.

Ken Ireland, Fontane’s style

Stylistically, Fontane challenges the pompous, cliché-ridden language of Bismarck’s materialistic Gründerzeit, by adopting a clipped, transparent prose style, shunning sentimentality and pathos.

John Lyon, Fontane’s Realism

Fontane asserted that Realism is fundamentally interested, that it represents a biased position or ‘Interessenvertretung’.

Fontane, language

‘Pointierte gestellten Sanssouci-Sprache’

Elena Caoduro, genre

The drama challenges and reinvents the terrorist film, relying on the maternal melodrama to channel the trauma of a violent loss.

Elena Caorduo, failure systems

The immolation of the heroine represents a total failure of support networks: the family and friends who are pushed away or lied to; the legal and medical system who are not able to provide justice or comfort to a grieving woman.

Elena Caoduro, the ending

By juxtaposing one after the other the failed attack and then the decisive one, Akin seems to offer two optional endings to his audience and leaves the verdict up to them.

Gozde Naiboglu, Katja’s lonliness

Katja’s loneliness is particularly contrasted with the global network of support available for the neo-Nazi perpetrators.

Gozde Naibolgu, catharsis

The climax does eventually deliver revenge, yet only after it troubles and frustrates the spectatorial investment in revenge for catharsis.

Anthony Scott, grief

Dwelling in her sorrow is agonizing, but moving on might be even worse.

Fatih Akin, justice

Es gibt die staatliche Justiz und es gibt ein individuelles Gerechtigkeitsgefühl. Und manchmal stoßen die beiden aufeinander. Der Film handelt auch von diesem Clash.