The Implications of the Process of Othering in Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language: A Study of Colonial Ideology

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze Harold Pinter’s play Mountain Language (1988) depending on the process of Othering to reveal the atrocities of colonial ideology. The study explains how colonial characters veer the indigenous characters as savage, uncivilized, and incomplete humans (Other) in order for the colonial Self to appear as advanced, civilized, and fully human. It reveals how the process of Othering functions in showing the colonial Self and the colonized Other along the play. It also shows, from the interaction with the young woman, that the process of Othering is not synonymous with racism, sexism, or class but a way of addressing any of them. This paper is dependent, mainly in its methodology on the works of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Sune Jensen. The study concludes that the process of Othering is used systematically by the colonial characters in order to produce the colonial Self as superior. Thus, the colonized characters submit to the process in order not to be harmed.