Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming and Postmodern Jewish Philosophy

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article examines Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming through the lens of postmodern Jewish philosophy. Pinter’s drama engages with both Freudian psychoanalysis and Jewish ethics in its deployment of elements characteristic of Jewish philosophy and postmodernism. The article analyses examples of such elements in The Homecoming, including the coincidence of Pinteresque silences and the fragmentation of the subject, the distinctly Jewish emphasis on the material over the spiritual, the Freudian displacement evident in the characters’ power struggles, the corruption of the act of homecoming, and the relativistic ethics of Teddy’s actions.