The Aesthetics of Refusal: Pinter among the Radicals

Abstract

As the modernity of modem drama recedes, historiography plays an increasingly central role in the discipline. The lexicon of postfeminism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism suggests that the ideological sands have shifted. The "modem condition" is no longer self-evident; the old structures of feeling, to borrow Raymond Williams's phrase, are no longer felt in the same way. The political contexts of modern drama are especially prone to erasure. Links between artistic practice and social commitment in many ways define the modern theatre, yet radical works often survive as purely aesthetic artifacts. Poised near the endpoint of the modern canon, Harold Pinter's career provides an exemplary nexus for dramatic historiography. Aesthetically, his works span modem and postmodern modes of cultural production. On the one hand, Pinter is arguably the last of the modern dramatists — a late practitioner of literary absurdism, in Martin Esslin's influential account. At the same time, Pinter has actively written for television and film, depreciating his literary status while immersing himself in commercial culture.