The Promise of Oblivion

Elfriede Jelinek’s Piano Teacher urges the reader to take seriously the language game of masochism. A character like Klemmer misconceives the masochistic enterprise as a carnal event when, in essence, it delineates a linguistic situation indexed by various rhetorical gestures of increasing complexity. Masochism is an exercise in letter writing, a course in curricular design. It demands the unpacking of one’s library. The current chapter further explores these linguistic parameters, focusing on the rhetorical overdrive so quintessential to the masochistic disposition. I will show that, as much as the masochist engages in linguistic acts of pleading, persuasion, conviction, and coaching, at the heart of the rhetoric of masochism lies the speech act of the promise, equipped with an unsettling twist. For the masochist cannot promise anything without first promising to forget everything.