Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology
Azarbaijan University of Tarbiat Moallem
Faculty of Literature and Humanities
Department of English Language and Literature
Dissertation Presented to the Department of English Language and Literature in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (MA) in
English Language and Literature
A Study of Postmodernist Elements in
Harold Pinter’s Selected Plays
Supervisor:
Abolfazl Ramazani, Ph.D.
Advisor:
Ahad Mehrvand, Ph.D.
By:
Zahra Ramazani
October / 2011
Tabriz / Iran
To the memory of all the fallen soldiers of the eight-year imposed war and those who
sacrifice their lives to help others live
iii
Abstract
Harold Pinter is considered by many critics as a “rebellious” dramatist who has resisted large-scale
generalizations by reinventing himself through his incompatible modes of writing. Yet, in their attempt to
provide a sturdy anchor to hold, critics have divided Pinter’s oeuvre into three sequential phases, namely
early plays, or “comedies of menace,” middle, “memory plays,” and later, “political plays.” However,
drawing an iron curtain for the works of a multidimensional dramatist like Pinter whose plays encompass
different modes of writing is almost impossible. It seems that postmodernism, with all its complexities
and paradoxes, has the potentiality to provide a better criterion for comprehensively studying all of
Pinter’s plays. The aim of this dissertation, therefore, is to study Pinter’s drama from a postmodernist
perspective but since postmodernism has a broad and contradictory nature, the dissertation has limited
itself to the ideas of the prominent postmodernist critic Ihab Hassan, who, in his attempt to define
postmodernism’s boundaries, has come up with eleven features which he calls the main “definiens” of
postmodernism. Three of Hassan’s features, i.e. “Self-less-ness, Depth-less-ness,” “Indeterminacy,” and
“Fragmentation,” which are thematically more related to each other than other features, have been chosen
successively for the study of postmodernism in four of Pinter’s plays, namely The Birthday Party and The
Dwarfs, The Collection, and A Kind of Alaska. The results of this dissertation underscore that: first, The
Birthday Party and The Dwarfs raise the postmodernist concern for the lost sense of subjectivity; second,
in The Collection, a postmodern indeterminate world is created, where there is no ultimate version of the
truth; third, A Kind of Alaska portrays a fragmented postmodern subject that inevitably succumbs to her
disintegrated sense of the self. The main conclusion to be drawn from this dissertation is that the existing
gap in Pinter studies can be filled in if we apply Hassan’s schematic definition of postmodernism to the
study of Pinter’s drama. The dissertation recommends the application of other elements of the eleven
features proposed by Hassan to comprehensively analyze Pinter’s drama.
Key Words: Harold Pinter, Ihab Hassan, Postmodernism, Subjectivity, Indeterminacy, and Fragmentation.
ii
Acknowledgments
My most sincere thanks go to my supervisor, Dr. Abolfazl Ramazani, who kindly read every
word of every draft of every chapter as well as all the new materials added to the final draft. His
invaluable comments, recommendations, and improvements throughout the writing of this
project illuminated my way and made the appearance of the final edition of this dissertation
possible.
My special thanks also go to Dr. Ahad Mehrvand for his patient guidance throughout the
labyrinth of writing this dissertation. I am really indebted to his kindness and consideration
towards me not only during this research but also throughout the three years that I have been his
student. His unflagging support will never be forgotten.
I would be remiss if I did not also thank Dr. Bahram Behin, my dear teacher who provided me
with a helpful hand in better understanding Ihab Hassan’s ideas and in developing these ideas in
my dissertation in a meaningful way.
Fond gratitude is still offered to my friends, especially to Zahra Heidari who generously helped
me in gathering necessary resources from Mirzaye Shirazi Library at Shiraz University. Finally,
the deepest gratitude is expressed to my dear family, especially my parents, and to Mr. Zamani,
my brother-in-law, who most kindly and patiently gave me enthusiasm and moral support during
the course of this project.
iv
Table of Contents
Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………… ii
Dedication …………………………………………………………………………… iii
Acknowledgments …..………………………………………….……………………. iv
Introduction ……………………………………………………..…………………… 1
Chapter I: The Birthday Party and The Dwarfs: Pinter’s representations of
Postmodern Subjectivity ………………………………………………..... 37
Chapter II: The Collection: Pinter’s Projection of Postmodern
Indeterminacy …………………………………………………………... 63
Chapter III: A Kind of Alaska: Pinter’s Exaggerated Model of Postmodern
Fragmentation ……………………………………………………………. 90
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….... 114
Notes …………………………………………………………………………………. 125
References ……………………………………………………………………………. 134
v
Introduction
1
Harold Pinter is a contemporary dramatist that notwithstanding his death in 2008, has
dynamically outlived his corporeal being by invoking the spirit of wonder and fathomlessness
lost since Shakespeare. His greatness is disclosed to us when we see how his enigmatic dramas
have undergone much interpretation by literary scholars and critics in their attempt to attain, at
least, a partial appreciation of his literary career.
One such endeavor put forward by Pinter critics ranging from Martin Esslin and Bernard
Dukore to more contemporary critics like Penelope Prentice, Charles Spenser, and Michael
Billington,1 has been to divide Pinter‟s oeuvre into three sequential phases vis-à-vis “Early
Plays” (1957-1968), “Middle Plays” (1968-1982), and “Later Plays” (1980-2000) which are
consecutively called “Comedies of Menace,” 2 “Memory Plays,”3 and “Overtly Political Plays.” 4
While elements such as menace, mystery, and absurdity exist more blatantly in Pinter‟s early
plays, the unreliability of memory and concern for the past are more emphasized in middle plays.
In a similar vein, Pinter‟s later plays highlight more openly the political messages which are
nevertheless metaphorically used in his earlier ones. However, the problem with chronological
dissections as such is that they inevitably neglect a great deal of meaning lurking beneath the
surface of Pinter‟s plays. The inadequacy of categorizing Pinter‟s drama under specific rubrics is
a fact even admitted by the proponents of the above theory since no single play can be
analytically restricted to a one-way system of analysis. For example, although Bernard Dukore
dissects Pinter‟s drama into five main sequential segments, 5 he warns the readers of easy
generalization by reminding them of the impossibility of a clear-cut conclusion (9). This means
that The Birthday Party (1958) is as much political as menacing and One for the Road (1984) as
much menacing as political (there are signs of menace in Nicolas‟s interrogation which reminds
us of Goldberg in The Birthday Party).
2
Equally, attempts to define Pinter‟s drama by sticking labels such as “Pinteresque” to them
are condemned to fail since this eponymous adjective misses the mark to take account of the
multifaceted nature of each Pinter play. 6 Critics have also related Pinter drama to literary schools
such as naturalism and realism. 7 However, these critics refuse to call Pinter a naturalist or a
realist due to Pinter‟s multidimensionality. In The Angry Theatre: New British Drama (1962),
John Taylor warns us to beware of “easy generalizations” by taking our attention to the “great
paradox” of Pinter‟s career that “the more „realistic‟ he is, the less real” he is (259). He reminds
us that Pinter cannot be called a naturalist since he masterfully constructs his plays in shapes
never achieved so neatly in reality (260). Martin Esslin emphasizes that although in Pinter plays
we are facing with real situations, believable characters, and naturalistic dialogues, we cannot
call them realistic since these plays deviate from realistic drama by raising “uncertainty about the
motivation of the characters, their background, [sic] their very identity” (37).
Nevertheless, the most recent controversy is whether to consider Pinter as a modernist or a
postmodernist dramatist. Martin Esslin, John Bush Jones, and Ruby Cohn are three of the most
important critics who have studied Pinter from a modernist viewpoint by regarding his (early)
plays as “Theatre of the Absurd” (Watt 90).8 In The Theater of the Absurd (1961), Esslin claims
that the works of dramatists like Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter are the artistic articulation
of Albert Camus‟s philosophy expounded in The Myth of Sisyphus that life is inherently absurd
(21). According to Esslin, these plays project “man‟s reaction to a world apparently without
meaning or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by an invisible outside force” (“Theatre of
the Absurd”). In Pinter: a Study of his Play (1976), Esslin relates Pinter to Beckett, Sartre, and,
in general, to the high modernist creed by calling him an existentialist writer who “like
Heidegger, takes as his starting point, in man‟s confrontation with himself” (35). Pinter‟s early
3
characters, hence, display the existential feelings of anguish and dread by being trapped in a
perplexing world, living in enclosed spaces, and being menaced by unacknowledged forces. The
central character, Rose, in The Room has shut herself in her room afraid of confronting the
outside world only to be eventually menaced by an intruder called Riley. Stanley in The Birthday
Party has found refuge in a boarding house and reclusively lives with a constant fear of intruders
who eventually appear with no clear explanation. In The Dumb Waiter, Pinter shows the failure
of language to function properly – a common absurdist theme – through Ben and Gus‟s elliptical
dialogues (Kane 159-160; Lewis 260). Likewise, the couple‟s estrangement in A Slight Ache,
disguised under their apparent union, is revealed to the reader by the arrival of a mysterious
match-seller. In these plays, therefore, Pinter aims at “a deeper perception of human existence”
(Aliakbari 3), something that has made Walter Ker call him the only contemporary Existentialist
playwright (qtd. in Gale 75).
Calling Pinter a modernist (Existentialist or Absurdist), though not out of line, intensifies
Pinter‟s paradox because of two reasons: first, Existentialism, in its full account, does not
completely blossom in Pinter‟s early plays; though existentially fraught and bewildered, Pinter‟s
paralyzed, puppet-like characters such as Rose, Stanley, Ben, Gus, and Edward are miles away
from the ideal existentialist characters who try to recreate themselves and their “authentic
identity” through their choice of action (Glicksberg 103). Second, later plays can rarely match up
to existential and absurdist readings: the modernist, nostalgic, and lonely characters in Pinter‟s
early plays are no longer present in later ones such as One for the Road, Mountain Language, or
Party Time which need a different criterion to be fairly appreciated. This does not mean to
discard any modernist reading in Pinter‟s later plays (e.g. Rebecca in Ashes to Ashes can be seen
as a modernist character who ultimately manages to project her subjectivity and recreate her
4
“authentic identity” by refusing to capitulate to Devlin‟s authority). Rather, modernism in later
plays is not the dominant mode any more. These plays are more concerned with projections of
power, atrocity, and torture which are analytically in tune with postmodern theories such as
Michel Foucault‟s theory of the relationship between the subject and power (Mansfield 52), 9 or
Jean Baudrillard‟s theory that in postmodern world reality is replaced with “the hyperreal,” or a
shadow of the original reality (Baudrillard: Simulations 2).10 But even postmodernist discussions
remain inefficient in solving the Pinter paradox since they have limited themselves to the study
of later plays that thematically and chronologically correspond to postmodern theories (later
plays were written in a time when postmodernism had been introduced to literary world by Ihab
Hassan in 1971) 11, neglecting to involve a postmodernist reading of plays written before 1971.
Consequently, the whole body of Pinter studies – whether their focus is on modernism or
postmodernism – is afflicted with a sense of incoherence since they cannot offer an inclusive
study of all Pinter plays. The task seems difficult when dealing with a “rebellious” dramatist like
Pinter who has escaped generalization by “constantly reinvent[ing] himself” (Almansi and
Henderson 101; Raby 2). An important question raised is whether there exists any criterion from
which we can look at Pinter‟s plays comprehensively without ruling out any of his drama. Can
we find a yardstick that can correspond to Pinter‟s multidimensionality?
According to Varun Begley, a good Pinter study “is obliged to mirror the dialectical
author, to incorporate the competing pulls of identity and difference, coherence and
fragmentation into the structure of its argument” (10). It seems that postmodernism, with all its
complexities, paradoxes, and fragmentations can furnish us with a better terrain from which we
can comprehensively study Pinter‟s paradoxical drama. But what has appeared in reality vis-àvis the study of Pinter‟s drama from a postmodernist perspective is more like a conspiracy of
5
silence on the critics‟ parts when coming to Pinter‟s early plays. That is, postmodernism, in
academic studies, has fallen short of its potentiality to also take account of Pinter‟s early works.
The reason is, according to critics, because of Pinter‟s “liminality” and the fact that he has stood
on the verge of two important literary periods, namely modernism and postmodernism (Begley
10). Consequently, the early plays are more compatible with modernist ideologies while later
plays are more in line with postmodernism. Although what the above critics claim is true to some
extent, we may wonder whether it is possible to fill in the gap between Pinter‟s earlier plays and
his later ones through the lens of postmodernism.
*****
This dissertation is an endeavor to, first, offer a postmodernist criterion for studying
Pinter‟s drama in a way that can cover the whole of Pinter‟s oeuvre, and second, to present a
postmodernist reading of Pinter‟s selected plays based on the suggested standpoint. There are
two assumptions behind this study: first, that postmodernism can offer a thorough understanding
of Pinter‟s drama due to its complexities and paradoxes which can easily correspond to the
plurality of Pinter‟s drama; and second, with a shift of emphasis, Pinter‟s career does contain a
coherence which thematically links his earlier plays to his later ones.
The significance of this study lies in the fact that Pinter has been considered by some
critics as a “dialectical” dramatist with incompatible modes of writing who has deliberately
resisted a stable interpretation by the lack of coherence in his drama (Begley 10).12 Admitting to
Pinter‟s ambiguity but not incoherence, this study tries to give a better appreciation of Pinter‟s
drama by showing a broader perspective from which the individual plays can be studied. This, of
course, does not mean to reject any other kinds of reading such as naturalist, realist, modernist
6
(absurdist and existentialist) on Pinter‟s works; rather, it tries to collect Pinter‟s individual plays,
no matter how dialectical, under the umbrella of postmodernism. By this, I do not mean to
disregard the singularity of each individual play or to neglect their nuanced differences, but
rather to read Pinter‟s selected drama in the light of some of the main postmodernist theories.
*****
In order to offer a postmodernist reading of Pinter‟s plays, the first thing to define,
however, is to clarify what we mean when referring to postmodernism, since the vague nature of
postmodernism makes any topic related to it blurred unless its boundaries be precisely marked
off. Postmodernism, to be sure, is not a clearly-defined movement with a set of certain elements
intractable from the writings of its prominent thinkers. It lacks a unified definition since it has
many leading exponents, each of whom has his/her own ideas that are sometimes in total
contradiction with the other. Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), Michel
Foucault (1926-1984), Felix Guattari (1930-1992), Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Jean-Francois
Lyotard (1924-1998), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), Ihab Hassan
(1925), Jürgen Habermas (1929), Fredric Jameson (1934), Charles Jencks (1939), and Julia
Kristeva (1941), to name but a few, are some of the main commentators and theoreticians of
postmodernism who have suggested a range of different assumptions for what they unanimously
call “postmodernism.”
Michel Foucault is mainly concerned with the relationship of power and knowledge and
how power works in postmodern world (Powell 94). He derides “monolithic state structure” that
has always tried to provide monolithic validations for power, believing, instead, in “micropolitics
7
of power” and the way these power relationships are being exercised in different local scales
such as hospitals, universities, schools, asylums, prisons, and even houses (ibid.).
For Jean-Francois Lyotard, postmodernism is the result of the advent of ever-changing
technology and the way it has increasingly altered different areas such as communication,
information storage and data banks and, in general, all status of knowledge (The Postmodern
Condition 3). Lyotard raises the question of “metanarratives” such as Marxism, Utilitarianism,
Freudism, and the like that once legitimated knowledge, rejecting all of them, declaring the end
of grand narratives, and celebrating the valorization of local knowledge by proclaiming
“eclecticism” as the ruling spirit of postmodernism (Answering the Question 145-49).
Jean Baudrillard emphasizes media and its indispensable role in turning the whole
equivalence of the world upside down by hypnotizing the postmodern man (Powell 41). He
asserts that the world has entered into the third order of “simulacra” – images and copies of real
objects and events which are no more true representatives of real entities in a Platonic sense:
rather, they have changed to become realities themselves (Powell 51). 13 The third model of
“simulacra” generates what Baudrillard calls, “hyperreality” – “a world without a real origin” –
which means the death of the real in the postmodern world (Lane 86-87). Baudrillard contends
that “Simulacra” have pervaded “every level of our existence, and we cannot escape from them
or express ourselves in terms other than through the codes which saturate us” (Walmsley 413).
Fredric Jameson takes a Marxist stance and throughout his famous book, Postmodernism,
Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, he refers to postmodernism as the continuation of the
previous capitalist system and calls it the latest phase of capitalism. He studies the relationship
between the individuals and the capitalist system and concludes that the postmodern individuals,
8
their interests, lifestyles, and preferences are governed by the incontrovertible, irresistible modes
of capitalism latent in the form of multinational corporations. In his opinion, in the consumer
culture of postmodernity, the individuals‟ unconscious is fixated on commodities, products, and
images presented to him/her through advertisements which have alienated the postmodern citydwellers. (Powell 35-37). Therefore, postmodernism is like a diamond; one can behold it from
his or her own perspective without being accused of visual error.
The disagreement concerning a consensus about the definition of postmodernism extends
to the appropriateness of the term to adequately describe the inherent characteristics of what is in
vogue today. In the opinion of Brian McHale, it is an inadequate term which nobody likes, but
everyone uses because there is no better alternative (3). McHale argues that if “modern” means
something related to the present, then “post-modern” means something related to the future and
in that case, a postmodernist work means something which has not yet been written. Hence, there
is either a “solecism” or the “post” in postmodernism has a different meaning than that offered
by dictionary. As a result, this “post” does not mean “after,” but rather “new,” and in this case it
means “newer than new,” or as Christine Brooke-Rose has said, “it merely means moderner [sic]
modern” or newer form of modernism (McHale 4).
Now the question is whether “postmodernism” really means “moderner modern,”
signifying the continuation of modernism, or “post” in postmodernism merely connotes “after;”
so to indicate “after the modernist period.” There are three different viewpoints towards this
issue: for some critics, postmodernism is a rupture from modernism by deviating from
modernism‟s focus on elite and sophisticated art that demands interpretation to a more
interdisciplinary art that mixes art with pop culture and everyday phenomena. 14 However, the
second group insists that postmodernism is the continuation and expansion of modernism‟s
9
emancipatory objectives of intellectuality, liberalism, democracy, and humanism. 15 Still, the
third group declares eclecticism as the ruling spirit of postmodernism by stressing how it blends
new avant-garde styles of modernism with various traditional, pre-modern elements to take
advantage of both old and new styles. 16
A new concern is arisen here regarding the definition of “modernism” itself, since as
Marjorie Perloff has stressed, we cannot come to understand postmodernism until we decide
what modernism is, because when we are dealing with a topic related to modernism, there are at
least two different perspectives at hand: some commentators tend to think of modernism as a
socially progressive trend of thought that sustains the power of human beings to create and
improve their lives with the aid of reason and scientific technology (Berman 16). Still others
focus on modernism as an aesthetic movement or a specific reaction to the use of technology in
the First World War. These critics refer to the anti-technological and nihilistic aspects of writers
and artists spanning the period from Nietzsche to Samuel Beckett.17 The important question is
that if postmodernism is a reaction to or a continuation of modernism, which of these definitions
of modernism is intended.
In Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed (2007), Mary Klages provides an inclusive
explanation about the relationship between modernism and postmodernism by stressing how this
relationship can be studied in two different ways. She points out that modernism has two facets,
or two modes of definition, both of which are related to postmodernism.
The first definition comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled as “modernism,”
which is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama in the later nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. It rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made and
what it should mean. From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:
10
emphasizing the impressionism and subjectivity in writing (e.g. the stream-of-consciousness
writing), rejecting the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed
narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions (e.g. Faulkner‟s multiply-narrated stories),
blurring of distinctions between genres (e.g. T.S. Eliot‟s documentary poetry and Woolf‟s or
Joyce‟s poetic prose), emphasizing fragmented forms and discontinuous narratives, moving
toward reflexivity about the production of the work of art – meta-fictions – and rejecting the
elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (e.g. William Carlos Williams‟s
minimalist poetry). In the period of “high modernism” – from 1910 to 1930 – the major figures
of modernist literature that helped to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do were
Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke.
Klages explains that postmodernism follows most of these ideas by rejecting rigid genre
distinctions and objective, omniscient point of view, by emphasizing pastiche, parody, irony, and
playfulness, by preferring reflexivity, simultaneity, fragmentation, discontinuity, and ambiguity,
and by emphasizing the deconstructed, dehumanized subject.
Notwithstanding the above similarities, Klages underscores that postmodernism differs
from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. For example, like postmodernism,
modernism tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity, but unlike postmodernism,
it presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented as a loss or as an
existential crisis. Many modernist works tried to support the idea that works of art can provide
the unity and coherence lost in modern life, but, according to Alan Wilde, unlike modernism‟s
urge to repair a disjointed and fragmented world, “postmodernism . . . . derives instead from a
vision of randomness, multiplicity, and contingency: in short, a world in need of meaning is
superseded by one beyond repair” (qtd. in Mikics 241). The tortured, isolated anti-heroes of
11
modernist – expressionist, impressionist, cubist, imagist, surrealist, Dadaist, avant-garde,
absurdist, and existential – works (e.g. Eliot‟s The Waste Land, Joyce‟s Ulysses, Woolf‟s To the
Light House, Beckett‟s and O‟Neill‟s dramas) make way in postmodern writing for the selfconsciously deconstructed narrators of novels by Vladimir Nabokov, John Fowles, John Barth,
Thomas Pynchon, or Julian Barnes.
Unlike modernism, postmodernism accepts the possibility of ambiguity, which contends
that things and events can have two different meanings at the same time. A more rational and
logo-centric approach, i.e. the Formalist criticism which is an outcome of modernism, tries to
avoid or reduce ambiguity as much as possible. Postmodern thought, however, sees simultaneous
views not as contradictory but as an integral part of the complex reality. Therefore, although
postmodernism is a continuation of most of the modernist and high modernist aesthetics, it is
also a deviation and sometimes a rejection of some of its precepts. Hence, by elucidating the first
definition of modernism and its similarities and differences with postmodernism, Klages shows
how postmodernism is related to modernism by being the continuation, and also a reaction of
some of the modernist ideas.
Klages, then, refers to the second facet of modernism which is called “modernity.” She
explains that modernity comes more from history and sociology than from art or literature; it is a
set of social, historical, philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the basis for the
aesthetic aspect of modernism. Modernity is associated with the European Enlightenment which
began in the middle of the eighteenth century (Malpas 33; Barry 63). It emphasizes that there is a
coherent and unified self that is conscious, rational, and autonomous, which knows itself and the
world through reason. The mode of knowing produced by the rational self is “science,” which
can provide universal truths and will always lead to progress and perfection. Language, or the
12
mode of expression used in producing knowledge must be rational and, thus, transparent; it must
function only to represent the perceivable world the rational mind observes. Therefore, there
must be a firm connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them –
indeed, an expressive theory of language (Flax 41).
However, postmodernism rejects modernity‟s emancipatory objectives such as Marxism,
Utilitarianism, the Enlightenment metanarratives of the French political emancipation and the
German philosophical speculation, since the outcome of heeding to these projects, which stressed
the application of reason for the betterment of the society, only resulted in disasters such as The
First and The Second World Wars, various environmental catastrophes, and different forms of
totalitarianism (Laclau 79-80). That is why Lyotard emphasizes that postmodernism in “the
incredulity toward metanarratives” (The Postmodern Condition xxiv).
Therefore, there are two facets for modernism both of which are related to postmodernism.
But, is there any link between “modernism” and “modernity”? Peter Barry explains that the
cultural movement of modernism is related to modernity in the sense that it constitutes a lament
for the lost sense of purpose, coherence, and system of values modernity had set to establish
(63). However, by rejecting modernity‟s emancipatory objectives, postmodernism also reacts
against modernism‟s sense of nostalgia for the lost sense of order, and here is the key to our
understanding the relation between postmodernism and modernism/modernity. That is, unlike
modernity‟s emphasis on the unified, autonomous, and knowable self who can understand the
world and exploit language for communication, postmodernism focuses on a de-constructed,
depthless self who is the construct of the language he uses. Nevertheless, unlike modernism‟s
lament for the lost sense of coherence, postmodernism accepts fragmentation, discontinuity, and
chaos by playing with disorder.
13
Now that the relation between postmodernism and modernism has been explained, a
question is still left and that is from which postmodernist perspective do we intend to approach
Pinter‟s drama? Are we going to consider postmodernism in our argument as a break from
modernism or a continuation of it? Do we approve Lyotard‟s idea about the end of grand
narratives, or we believe that postmodernism is, itself, “the grand narrative of the end of grand
narratives?” (Walmsley 406) Which definition of modernism is intended when we refer to
postmodernism‟s rejection of modernist ideas?
To limit the study, to impart depth and richness to the argument, all the above mentioned
theoreticians and their approaches toward postmodernism will be ruled out except Ihab Hassan‟s
ideas which will receive the lion‟s share of attention as the basis for the discussion of Pinter‟s
postmodernism, while referring to other theoreticians, when necessary, to make the point of
argument clearer. The reason behind choosing Hassan‟s viewpoint is that it can accomplish the
general objective of this dissertation stated at the beginning of the introduction – to present a
touchstone from which one can have a comprehensive view of Pinter‟s whole oeuvre. In order to
attain this objective, it is important to briefly review Hassan‟s ideas about postmodernism and its
ambivalent relation to modernism to see how Hassan‟s theories can shed light on postmodern
studies on Pinter‟s drama.
Hassan is an influential literary and cultural critic who is “widely recognized as a leading
theorist of postmodernism” (Hutcheon 49). For more than forty years, he has contemplated on
postmodernism to define and propagate it.18 In his writings, Hassan has tried to illuminate
postmodernism‟s boundaries, where modernism ends and postmodernism begins. He believes
that postmodernism is “a constellation of values” which is a reaction to both the aesthetic
movement of modernism and the social and philosophical project of modernity (The
14
Dismemberment 260). In this way, Hassan connects literary, philosophical, social, and cultural
trends under the term postmodernism.
In “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism” (1982), Hassan divides the literature of the last
hundred years into three chronological phases, namely avant-garde, modern, and postmodern,
though he admits that all three phases “have conspired together to that „tradition of the new‟ that,
since Baudelaire, brought „into being an art whose history . . . . has consisted of . . . . political
mass movements whose aim has been the total renovation not only of social institutions but of
man himself‟” (The Dismemberment 266). After a brief explanation about avant-garde, modern,
and postmodern literary movements, Hassan offers a table, projecting the differences between
modern and postmodern literature. Under the rubric of modernism, he includes features such as
form, purpose, design, hierarchy, finished work process, creation, presence, centering, genre and
boundary, root and depth, narrative, paranoia, and determinacy. In each counter column are
given the specific postmodernist features: anti-form, play, chance, anarchy, performance,
decreation and deconstruction, absence, dispersal, intertext, rhizome and surface, anti-narrative,
schizophrenia, and indeterminacy (267-68). Nevertheless, Hassan admits that the dichotomies his
table represents remain “insecure” and “equivocal” since there are so many exceptions in both
modernism and postmodernism (269).
Hassan, then, refers to the fact that his proposed table draws on ideas from different fields
– “rhetoric, linguistics, literary theory, philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, political
science, even theology;” in a word, he tries to take advantage of all the contemporary trends to
enumerate the most important features of postmodernism so to give a definition to this seemingly
indefinite term (268-69).
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