Infinite Responsibility and the Third in Emmanuel Levinas and Harold Pinter
In this article I test Levinas' well-known presentation of alterity in the context of Pinter's two most well-known absurd dramas, The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, where condensed everyday life situations present some extraordinary encounters with Others. Harold Pinter has proved to be...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2015]
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| In: |
Literature and theology
Year: 2015, Volume: 29, Issue: 2, Pages: 153-165 |
| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture NCA Ethics ZC Politics in general |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In this article I test Levinas' well-known presentation of alterity in the context of Pinter's two most well-known absurd dramas, The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, where condensed everyday life situations present some extraordinary encounters with Others. Harold Pinter has proved to be the most prominent dramatist of alterity, whose work can be seen in many ways to tally with the basic concerns of Levinasian ethics. Drama is always instructive in such investigations, since the validity of theoretical axioms in question is tested in concrete dramatic situations. As I will try to show, these dramas of alterity address ethical issues that are also at the centre of Levinasian ethics. At the same time, they disclose a plurality of alterities, a multitude of Others marginalized in Totality and Infinity. Besides their obvious and explicit concern with alterity, I feel encouraged to read Levinas and Pinter together because of their shared sensitivity to the world of ethics and politics as contemporaries (considering the major works discussed in the article), and their common intellectual background. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/fru035 |