Feminine Identitary Discourses in Christa Wolf’s and Elfriede Jelinek’s Novels
Feminine Identitary Discourses in Christa Wolf’s and Elfriede Jelinek’s Novels

Summary/Abstract: My paper follows the way in which the feminine identity in constructed and deconstructed in Christa Wolf’s and Elfride Jelinek’s novels. In the context of postmodern literature, the feminine and the masculine become principles inside a system of power in which identity is built not on moral grounds, like in the traditional culture, but on ideological grounds. The undermining of the centralizing discursive power pertaining to the patriarchal model, and the deconstruction of authority either in the social ideology (Jelinek), or in the historical one (Wolf) are closely followed in my paper in order to answer the following question: do these books challenge only in a subversive manner a culture dominated by masculinity or are they also attempts of building a new humanism?

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