The Performance of Identity and Power: A Post-Structuralist Reading of Role-Playing in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker

In this paper, the researcher examines the process of identity formation and power relations in the play The Caretaker by Harold Pinter using the Post Structural theory, in particular, the theories of discourse and power as developed by Michel Foucault. The three main characters of the play Davies, Aston and Mick are discussed as an unstable subject that is constantly negotiating itself through identity within the tight domestic realm. This is achieved through the meticulous account of language, silence and role-play, the study theorizes that what one is referring to as identity in the play is not some essential and fixed quality but rather a fluid construct subject to discursive shifts in power. Their interactions in the context of characters reveal that power is established not in the form of explicit violence or status, but through control of symbolic spaces and symbols of belonging and social location through linguistic and structural maneuvers of the speech. As the paper indicates, the minimal setting used by Pinter is a stage of contended identities that must be performed in such a way that their characters constantly redefine themselves depending on the perceived danger or opportunities. This interpretation adds to Pinter scholarship because it is an attempt to divert the preoccupation with existential and absurdist readings to a much needed interrogation of the agency of discourse in its processes of producing and controlling identity and authority.