Objectifying the World in Harold Pinter’s plays. The Struggle with the Other Cover Image
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Obiectificarea lumii în piesele de teatru ale lui Harold Pinter: Confruntarea cu Celălalt
Objectifying the World in Harold Pinter’s plays. The Struggle with the Other

Author(s): Alina-Elena Roşca
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Universitatea Petrol-Gaze din Ploieşti
Keywords: cultural identity; cultural codification; otherness; subjectivity; subject position; objectification; objectifying gaze

Summary/Abstract: Harold Pinter shapes a fully formed aesthetic world which proves to be a meta-commentary on the conventions of drama, its subversive vein opening up the process of meaning-negotiation. Operating according to the principle of negation, objects are estranged from any practical use and individuals are refused the possibility of activating a meaningful world around them. Pinter’s characters cannot relate to the referential world and since they are caught in the impossibility of ever connecting to social consciousness, they outweigh the loss of the world and its phenomenological pressure through an act of performance. Life is performed rather than experienced; prompted by their inner frustration individuals create their own reality, a self-determining world and discourse, a regressive act of attaching themselves to their own illusions and of dismissing the material coordinates of the world. There appears the struggle to objectify the others, to contextualize relationships, to define positions in order to confirm the fantasy of still being in control. The world gains meaning through the objectifying gaze of the Other, as truth, reality derive from the eyes of the beholder. Characters attempt to impose their own cultural codes, to reduce everything to their own configurations of time and of memory, to possess the narrative of the world; the Other resists codification and operating outside the objectifying gaze and constructs, he/she escapes the world of familiar attributes, venturing into his own world of inverted values.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 255-264
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: English