Deprived of Free Will: Antihumanism in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party

Mohsen Ravanpak and Fatemeh Pourjafari*
Additional contact information
Mohsen Ravanpak: Department of English Language and Literature, College of Humanities, Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran
Fatemeh Pourjafari*: Department of English Language and Literature, College of Humanities, Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran

English Literature and Language Review, 2020, vol. 6, issue 3, 24-31

Abstract: The present paper discusses one of Pinter’s plays, The Birthday Party, in the light of the notion of antihumanism as proposed by Foucault, Althusser, and Freud. Arguing that an important aspect of Harold Pinter’s plays is the description of how people are forced into an antihuman state in which they have no opportunity to show and practice their individuality and free will, the present research applies Foucault to see how antihumanism is created through politics, applies Althusser to see it coming through ideology, and applies Freud to find how it comes through psychological mechanisms. Thus, all through the research, Foucault’s notions of disindividualization and institutionalization, Althusser’s notions of Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatuses, and Freud’s notions of id-ego-superego and defense mechanism act as the theoretical framework to discuss how antihumanism is created in the course of the play.

Keywords: Antihumanism; Power-knowledge; Ideological state apparatuses; Death drive (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.arpgweb.com/pdf-files/ellr6(3)24-31.pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.arpgweb.com/journal/9/archive/03-2020/3/6 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arp:ellrar:2020:p:24-31

Access Statistics for this article

English Literature and Language Review is currently edited by Dr. Tecnam Yoon

More articles in English Literature and Language Review from Academic Research Publishing Group Rahim Yar Khan 64200, Punjab, Pakistan.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Managing Editor ().