Von Migration zur Remigration und andere Akzentverschiebungen in Die Schutzbefohlenen - Was danach geschah (2024)

The essay examines Die Schutzbefohlenen – Was danach geschah (DS2), Elfriede Jelinek’s 2024 revision and continuation of Die Schutzbefohlenen (2013). Adopting a comparative and intersemiotic approach, it analyzes the shifting emphases between the 2013 “base text” and DS2. Like a seismograph, DS2 captures and reflects the resurgence of racism and xenophobia, as well as the failure of European reception and integration policies—against the backdrop of the 2024 Potsdam meeting, where the AfD devised a plan for the “remigration” of migrants. The analysis focuses on key structural shifts: the transformation of the we-voice, which no longer forms a chaotic jumble of voices but instead marks a polarization of speaking positions; the intensified allusions to Nazi rhetoric, already latent in the 2013 text; and the reinterpretation of the water motif. While water in the original text oscillated ambivalently between hope and lethal drowning, DS2 shifts the focus to the opposite extreme: death by dehydration in the desert, the fate awaiting the “remigrated” migrants. Jelinek interweaves this theme with contemporary ecocritical discourse, expanding the political scope of her work to include a pressing ecological dimension.