The Work of Josef Fritzl

An unsettling exploration of how postmodern theory falters when applied to Josef Fritzl's domestic nightmare

Legendary villain Josef Fritzl is turning 90

The paper behind this Substack’s paywall has a curious history worth sharing with you. Its origins date back to 2010-2011, when I proposed what was essentially meant to be a "Sokal hoax" to a colleague (whom I'll refer to as KM).

For those unfamiliar, the Sokal hoax refers to physicist Alan Sokal's famous 1996 prank, where he submitted a deliberately nonsensical paper filled with fashionable postmodern jargon to the cultural studies journal Social Text. The journal published it without peer review, and Sokal revealed his hoax afterward to demonstrate the lack of intellectual rigor in certain academic circles that prioritized theoretical language over substance.

My proposal was similar in spirit — to create a paper that would use the language and frameworks of critical theory to analyze something so horrific that it would reveal the moral and intellectual limitations of applying such theoretical frameworks to real atrocities. However, my colleague KM took the proposal with deadly earnestness, coming to view it as a genuine academic endeavor rather than academic satire.

She worked on it intermittently for several years, fashioning it in its rough form as a presentation paper suitable for the MLA (Modern Language Association) or one of its regional chapter conference — hence the lack of traditional in-text, MLA-style citations, which I’m not going to bother to add because all of you are old enough to use Google or click the provided hyperlinks.¹ Eventually, KM abandoned the project, believing that the Josef Fritzl case was simply too serious to be treated in this manner.

Upon recently revisiting the 4,500 words she had completed, I found myself thinking that precisely because the Fritzl case was so serious, it deserved this kind of treatment — an analysis that exposed how inadequate our theoretical language can be when confronting genuine horror. The paper's analytical approach might be more than Fritzl himself deserved. (It should be noted that Fritzl had his own childhood traumas, such as losing his father during World War II when he was but a wee lad — though this explains nothing and excuses nothing.)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been spelunking through the darkest depths of my uncollected works, searching for unusual, detailed material worthy of new life among the eclectic musings on Oliver Bateman Does the Work. To that end, I decided to complete this paper — insofar as anything, including life itself, can ever truly be "complete" until one is "laid among the swee’peas" and "pushing up daisies."

It seems fitting that this publication coincides with Fritzl's 90th birthday tomorrow (April 9, 2025). According to recent news, his lawyer Astrid Wagner is currently pushing for his release from prison due to his deteriorating health and dementia. Wagner, who views her client as a kindly old pensioner, has made statements suggesting that Fritzl fantasizes about "coming out to a big celebration with people cheering and music," revealing a profound disconnect from reality. While he was transferred from a facility for "mentally abnormal" inmates to a regular prison in 2024, his legal team now seeks to have him moved to a dementia care center.

Despite having served enough time to be technically eligible for parole, it seems unlikely that Austrian authorities will simply release him given the magnitude of his crimes: imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years, repeatedly raping her, and fathering seven children with her (one of whom died shortly after birth). His grotesque deception — forcing Elisabeth to write letters claiming she had run away to join a cult while he presented three of the children as "foundlings" to be raised in his upstairs household — represents one of the most disturbing cases of domestic abuse in modern history, though the recent case of Kimberly Sullivan in Waterbury, CT may give it a run for its money.²

This paper, with its clinical application of queer theory, Foucauldian analysis, and other critical frameworks honed during my own incarceration in graduate school, serves as both an intellectual exercise and a meditation on the limits of theory itself when confronted with genuine evil. In reading it, one might consider whether our academic language helps us understand such cases or merely provides comfortable intellectual distance from their horror.

I present it here as a document that raises difficult³ questions about how we theorize atrocity.⁴