97 LITERATURE Elizabeth Sakellaridou Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece “All Them Aliens Had It”: Pinter’s Cosmopolitanism Summary roughout his life Pinter always showed, both as ar tist and as social being, a profound respect for the rights of the individual and human dignity. His dramatic output as well as his overt political activity demonstrate his unbroken adherence to the ideology and behaviour of a citizen of the world. My endeavour in this paper will be to argue about what I shall call Pinter’s visceral cosmopolitanism. is approach, on the one hand, reads his politica l actions through the highly politicized agenda of the contemporary cosmopolitan discourse and, on the other hand, it adopts a more retrospective point of view, which seeks to nd a fundamental correspondence between the Pinteresque uncertainty, fear and ambiguity and Immanuel Kant’s rather more ethical understanding of cosmopolitanism, especially his novel idea of hospitality. Key words: Harold Pinter, cosmopolitanism, Immanuel Kant »Vsi oni tujci so ga imeli«: Pinterjevo svetovljanstvo Povzetek Pinter je vse življenje kot umetnik in kot posameznik izkazoval globoko spoštovanje do pravic posameznika in do človeškega dostojanstva. Tako njegove drame kot politično udejstvovanje kažeta njegovo neomajno zvestobo ideologiji in obnašanju državljana sveta. V prispevku bom poskusila utemeljiti nekaj, kar imenujem svetovljanstvo do obisti (visceral cosmopolitanism). Omenjeni pristop bere njegova politična dejanja po eni strani skozi prizmo sodobnega svetovljanskega diskurza, po drugi pa zavzame retrospektivnejše stališče, ki poskuša najti temeljno ujemanje med pinterjansko negotovostjo, strahom in dvoumnostjo ter Kantovim bolj etičnim razumevanjem svetovljanstva, še posebej njegovim pojmovanjem gostoljubnosti. Ključne besede: Harold Pinter, svetovljanstvo, Immanuel Kant UDK 821.111.09Pinter H.:172.1:177 DOI: 10.4312/elope.9.1.97-105 98 Elizabeth Sakellaridou “All Them Aliens Had It”: Pinter’s Cosmopolitanism “All Them Aliens Had It”: Pinter’s Cosmopolitanism 1. Introduction When Harold Pinter visited Aristotle University in the critical year 2000, he repeated emphatically the same categorical statement about his art as he had given at the very beginning of his writing career: I don’t write plays from a theoretical position. I don’t have a concept at all. e play takes me with it, you know. So I don’t really know what is happening until I nd out through the writing of the play. You are in a very diexes” (Wästberg 2008, 4, my emphasis). Pinter’s own address at the ceremony (projected on video wall because of his illness), after a relatively short reference to his dramatic work, focused mainly on the idea of world citizenship, moral obligation and international law and justice. All these are terms and 1 Pinter and Emotions: Affective (Dis)charges in Space. The Pinter Review (201 1). 99 LITERATURE ideas that belong to the domain of political philosophy and are most expediently explicated through the current discourse of cosmopolitanism, a recently revived earlier discipline, whose main ramications today can be categorised for the sake of the present study in the following way: moral cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan governance and cultural cosmopolitanism (Rumford 207, 23). e international dissemination of Pinter’s theatre became the thematic focus of a recent international conference “Pinter Abroad” (in Maribor, Slovenia, September 2011). In tune with the global scope of that conference, my paper will try to place Pinter’s vision of the world (as manifested both in his plays and in his various other writings, interviews and addresses) within the legacy of contemporary cosmopolitan thought. It is a specic artistic stance that I would like to call Pinter’s “visceral cosmopolitanism.” 2. Towards Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism – a term usually associated with modernism – fell into disgrace for several decades after the emergence of postcolonial theory in the mid-1970s. e newly coined terms “globalization” and “transnationalism” eclipsed cosmopolitanism’s claims to a universal and borderless vision of the world, accusing it of being a limited, Eurocentric product of modernist thought. However, as these two apparently more dynamic and potentially more liberating neologisms gradually showed their true face – a new economic, political and even military imperialism of the West – cosmopolitanism crept back into the contemporary theoretical eld with new force and a new, broader spectrum of meanings. First appearing as a concept in ancient Greek culture and philosophy and having found a more systematic form – for modern European thought – in Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy, cosmopolitanism has recently been redressed for a more positive political use, trying to overcome all the tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities that were left open in the complexity of Kantian philosophy. e vicissitudes of political theory – any political theory – and political practice are almost a commonplace now, and I do not intend to involve myself in trite and fruitless debates. My own cursory search in the relevant bibliography has yielded an unending string of revisionist critiques, attacks and counterattacks concerning the e@ciency or ine@ciency of this or that theoretical perspective and re>ecting the instability of theoretical positions. Pinter himself is a good example of a personality torn between the drive of the artist, on the one hand, and the pragmatism of a citizen of the world, on the other, always treading on this risky but exciting dichotomy and antinomy – always walking across the rift rather than trying to bridge it. While taking into account the specic political app lications that the term cosmopolitanism often fullls today – which interestingly correspon d to Pinter’s accurate documentation through names, numbers and jargon when referring to current international politics, atrocities and interventions 2 – I shall adopt a more retrospective point of view, which seeks to nd a fundamental correspondence between the celebrated Pinteresque uncertainty, fear and ambiguity and the basic Kantian understanding of cosmopolitanism and particularly the German philosopher’s novel idea of hospitality. 2 His Nobel Prize speech reflects in full the precision of his political language in many previous media statements and interviews. 100 Elizabeth Sakellaridou “All Them Aliens Had It”: Pinter’s Cosmopolitanism In the third article of his seminal essay Perpetual Peace (1795), eloquently entitled “e Law of World Citizenship Shall be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality,” Kant introduced the term “cosmopolitan right” with specic referenc e to the “duty of hospitality” (Benhabib 2008, 21). Kant made it clear that this latter concept is not a case of philanthropy but a right; it is a claim on the side of the “stranger” for temporary residency on our land, our territory (2008, 22). is dictum forms the core of the Kantia n doctrine of cosmopolitan right, which is neither legal positivism nor natural law but sits uncomfortably – as Seyla Benhabib convincingly contends – “at the boundaries of the polity” (2008, 22), neither denying nor enforcing universal moral law. e question remains: is the ri ght of asylum/refuge seeking a “reciprocal moral obligation” or an “enforceable norm of behaviour” (2008, 22) and in whose name? e ambiguity of Kant’s position at this particular point of his theory has been subtly summarised in the contemporary critique of cosmopolitanism as “creating quasi-legally binding obligations through voluntary commitments” (2008, 23) – an acute observation that underscores further the Kantian uncertainty and perplexity. Interestingly, this is precisely the murky ground that Harold Pinter has repeatedly chosen to explore in a number of his works which focus on some aspect of hospitality, starting with the very early story $e Examination (1955) and expanding more in such characteristic plays as $e Caretaker (1959) and $e Basement (1966) but also – in diects the wider aspirations of his political problematic and conrms retrospectively the analogous utopian n ature of Kant’s initial vision of a boundless 102 Elizabeth Sakellaridou “All Them Aliens Had It”: Pinter’s Cosmopolitanism “cosmopolitan republican order” (Rumford 2007, 21) as he conceived it in his earlier work on the concept of cosmopolitanism, entitled Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784). Realising himself the inapplicability of his early political aspiration, Kant made a later, more concessive suggestion in Perpetual Peace that what was possible, at least, in the 18 th -century political condition was a “cosmopolitan law,” which would limit the actions of nation states. 3 is prophetic proposition found partial realisation, in the second half of the 20 th century, through the foundation of the United Nations, the declaration of human rights and the recognition of crimes against humanity. All these are humanitarian institutions which have evolved today into the establishment of international law and the recognition of legally binding cosmopolitan norms. If the majority of Pinter’s dramatic works subscribe to a more aspiratory Kantian cosmopolitan ethic, his political declarations and speeches (but also his later, more overtly political plays, including the early $e Hothouse) prove him to adhere to this more recent side of cosmopolitanism, gradually cemented in an international legal system, which is visible and systematic, if still precarious in its actual application in the ruthless terrain of world politics and power struggles. Certainly, Pinter, the political activist, by naming the specic atrocities committed especially by the USA, as the superpower of global authoritarianism at the turn of the century, aligns himself with the political dimension of cosmopolitanism, which is systemic and legalistic and has as its specic agenda to stop or minimize oppression and to impose legal sanctions to cases of severe infringement of international law. e speech he gave while receivin g an Honorary Degree from Aristotle University of essaloniki in April 2000, part of which was int erestingly incorporated into the Stockholm speech of 2005, is a clear example of this new, judicial style of his political language: I contend that the bombing of Serbia had nothing whatsoever to do with “humanitarian intervention.” It was a blatant assertion of US power. at and the continuing bombing of Iraq are illegal, immoral, illegitimate acts, against all understood criteria of international law, holding both international law and the United Nations in contempt. (Pinter 2000, 103, my emphasis) It is here that clarity and truth enter his vocabulary. However, his polemical political style is always tempered by another judicious eye, the ltering eye /I of the artist, who knows where to draw the line; who reserves for his art the riches of his imagination. From the artistic perspective , the other side of Kantian cosmopolitanism, as an ethical and philosophical mode of “imagining the world”, 4 is more akin to the dramatic world of Pinter’s characters, since it focuses more on the rights of the individual rather than on organized civic society, the collective “polis.” What is more, in this subjectivist context, neither Kant, the 18 th -century philosopher, nor Pinter, the 20 th -centurry theatre artist, sacrices the value of the particul ar for the sake of the global – a practice for which several branches of contemporary cosmopolitan discourse have been criticised for following. 5 3 A concise but clear description of the development of Kant’s political thought on the particular issue of cosmopolitanism is given in Cosmopolitanism and Europe (ed. Chris Rumford 2007, 20-1). 4 In the introduction to his edited volume, Cosmopolitanism and Europe, Chris Rumford gives a dynamic contemporary elasticity to the Kantian tradition of cosmopolitanism, viewing the term as a “kaleidoscope” of interpretations, of “models for imagining the world” and forging new, “fluid and evolving … relationships between the individual, the community and the world” (2007, 2). 5 Vivienne Boon and Gerard Delanty argue convincingly about the dangers of a completely universalistic perspective on cosmopolitanism, which suppresses altogether its individual experiential origins (Rumford 2007, 24). 103 LITERATURE Certainly, Pinter manages to keep both the parochial and the global a>oat. In $e Caretaker, behind the self-in>icted misery of the citizen-cum-underdog Davies, one can also hear the echo of another social substratum, that of the non-citizens, the “aliens,” whose misery is rather mued in the play. If one listens carefully, however, this play actually resonates with the dreams, desires and frustrations of many more than the three on-stage individual characters: not only the ones who are allowed a name, a voice and a presence on stage but also the scenically invisible and mute ones, whose existence is relegated to the fading backdrop of British society in the 1960s, when immigration was for many a threatening new phenomenon. Similarly, Ashes to Ashes (1996) is and is not about the grand historical narrative of the Holocaust, since its protagonist Rebecca, who has all the recognisable features of a contemporary British female citizen, also stands at the boundary between her closed personal history and the recent traumatic European past stamped by the Nazis’ unspeakable atrocities. is dual, ambiguous existence of the female protagonist is also playfully and murkily doubled in Pinter’s text by the uncanny image of the “guilty pen,” whose material, utilitarian function in the play carries simultaneously a cosmic (rather than a metaphysical) dimension. 6 3. Conclusion As theorist B. J. Barber has recently observed, “our attachments start parochially and only then grow outward” (quoted by Boon and Delanty in Rumford 2007, 24). Imagining his characters (and often his stage objects) in a similar phenomenological vein, Pinter makes sure not to “run the risk of bypassing [the] more parochial identic ations” (Boon and Delanty in Rumford 2007, 24) that give >esh to his theatre. As he has repeatedly stated, he cares for all his characters; he listens to what they have to say, and this is what makes his plays so immediate and irresistible. When he recently talked about the sinister characters of his last play Celebration (2000), he echoed his early manifesto of 1961: In Celebration, although most of the characters are pretty vicious and brutal, nevertheless, I get a lot of fun out of them, I enjoy their zest for life really. So I am not making any kind of moral judgment. (Pinter interview 1999-2000, 93, my emphasis) It is the human impulse and vitality, this “zest for life,” in very individual and not collective manifestations, that throb in his writing, that burst out on the stage – any stage – and come across to the audience – any audience – in the world. is is what I want to call Pinter’s visceral cosmopolitanism, a basically ethical and a