Medea as Material: Heiner Müller, Myth, and Text

Abstract

This essay examines Despoiled Shore Medeamaterial Landscape with Argonauts, Heiner Müller's postmodern remaking of the Medea myth. I argue that Medea is the ideal centre for Müller's critique of the western subject, as she represents the destructive future that the East German Müller sees as both hopeful and inevitable. Müller explodes Medea's potential by using her not as a character but as material, creating various irresolvable juxtapositions and contradictions of character, structure, narrative, and performance. This forces a confrontation with the cultural and theatrical legacy of Greek tragedy and presents to artists and audiences a crisis of culture and interpretation.