Harold Pinter’s “More Precisely Political” Dramas, or a Post-1983 Economy of Affect

This essay explores selections from Harold Pinter’s later, more decidedly political dramas (Precisely [1983], One for the Road [1984], Mountain Language [1988], and The New World Order [1991]) from the point of view spectatorship and, more specifically, by means of a theoretical discourse of affect based chiefly on Deleuze. It argues that, in apprehending the affective dimension of Pinter’s political dramas from the 1980s onwards, we can better understand how their political character consists precisely in the way in which they enable spectators to undergo a transformative affective experience. Relatedly, bringing a discourse of affect to Pinter’s political dramas permits us to discern the relationship between the works’ political expression and their aesthetic composition.