Postdramatic Performativity and the Aesthetics of Power in Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming

This study examines the dramaturgical innovations and philosophical provocations embedded in Harold Pinter’s early and mid-career work, particularly in The Homecoming (1965) as a paradigmatic articulation of his theatrical aesthetics. The paper explores how Pinter departs from conventions of psychological realism and Aristotelian structure, crafting instead a dramatic mode rooted in opacity, linguistic subversion, and performative silence. Through detailed textual analysis, informed by theories of the absurd (Esslin), performativity (Butler), and postdramatic theatre (Lehmann), the research aims to elucidate how Pinter’s plays resist interpretive closure and dramatize the failure - not merely the absence - of meaning. Particular emphasis is placed on the way The Homecoming constructs gendered power through ritualized dialogue, domestic space, and erotic economy, positioning Ruth not as a passive object of male desire, but as a sovereign agent who reconfigures the symbolic order through strategic ambiguity. Employing a qualitative methodology grounded in close reading and supported by interdisciplinary frameworks, including gender theory, poststructuralist philosophy, and performance studies, the study shows how Pinter’s plays generate phenomenological intensity and epistemological instability. The results highlight a consistent dramaturgical logic wherein characters operate as performative surfaces enacting ideological scripts rather than coherent psychological entities. In The Homecoming, the absence of moral or narrative resolution foregrounds the raw mechanics of power, silence, and ritualized presence. Ultimately, this study concludes that Pinter’s contribution to modern drama lies in his transformation of theatre into a site of ontological disturbance, where the failure to communicate becomes the primary event, and the unknown - rather than its resolution - is staged as the play’s enduring truth.