The mythology of fundamental social transformation : Christa Wolf's Medea (1996) in the tradition of her Kassandra (1983)

A mythology of fundamental social transformation implies two meanings: 1) the impossibility of fundamental social transformation and 2) a new mythology aimed at addressing social concerns on a universal scale. Christa Wolf’s Medea (1996) and her Kassandra (1983) are unique among novels in that they maintain a delicate balance between these two opposites while constructing the illusion that they paradoxically constitute the same event. It is the truth as oxymoron that emerges as the backdrop for the mythological setting of Christa Wolf’s two efforts in remythologization, whose foundations are ambiguous and include two seemingly incompatible ideas: the possibility and the simultaneous impossibility of fundamental social transformation along any political lines. What energizes Wolf’s remythologizing projects is her feminism. Wolf in Medea as in Kassandra surreptitiously champions the feminist doctrine of Engels as set forth in Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats [The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State] (1884) in order to breach the gulf between the systemic opposites and to serve as a force for a passive advocacy. It is this genre of advocacy rooted in myth, Marxism, and history that calls into question the shortcomings of both the capitalist and the communist systems with eloquence and energy. I analyze the nature of this potency and show how it represents another culmination for the German novel in the continually progressive trajectory that has charted its history.