GESPENSTER DES FINANZKAPITALISMUS: ZU ELFRIEDE JELINEKS WIRTSCHAFTSTEXTEN "DIE KONTRAKTE DES KAUFMANNS", "SCHLECHTE NACHREDE: UND JETZT?", "ABER SICHER!"

This article is devoted to three works by Austrian Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek which deal with the contemporary economic crisis and with the mechanisms of financial economics. The analysis presented focuses mainly on the immaterial and unreal nature of today’s market whose essence and methods of operating is reminiscent of a spectre. This immaterial aspect of the economic and financial system is demonstrated on the example of an ambiguous and ambivalent language employed by Jelinek and in the fictionalization processes and disappearance of references, which are characteristic of market functioning. The works analysed also point out to human apparitions, or social outcasts (Z. Bauman’s Wasted Lives) as effects of the spectres of financial capitalism. Deprived of money and property, they fight for survival as underdogs.