George Orwell's social and political thought : power/knowledge, identity/difference, and guerrilla warfare
Date
1991
Authors
Neufeld, Roderick Peter
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
1. The texts of George Orwell may be read as attempts to critically address questions of identity/ difference and power /knowledge, questions which are familiar to students of contemporary social and political thought, but which also may be said to have a lengthy and fertile history. As early as Plato's Republic, these questions - which, to speak in general terms, concern the political role of symbol, myth, and history in the quest to create and to undermine unity - have plagued and engaged a wide variety of political writers. Indeed, the Republic is a text which places an emphasis on the power of myth, symbol, and history to both bind and subvert the ideological glue which keeps community stuck to particular patterns of social and political existence. Orwell's texts speak to these problems as they are manifest in twentieth century political practices, practices which emphasize security and rigid enclosure, and which submerge and colonize difference by drawing difference inside the boundaries of nation-state, party line, culture, and class. As I read his texts, crises of identity are not primarily viewed by Orwell as diseases or stages of development for which a unified identity is the cure or end-point; rather, they are looked upon as political battles and as sources of creative and critical thought. The subject is not viewed as an autonomous actor who requires the guidance of singular Reason in order to maximize his or her interests; autonomy is regarded as illusory, and Reason as a particular configuration of power /knowledge which orders and structures society in particular ways. As a process of power, Reason tends to suppress alternative political practices and critical thought.
2. According to this reading of his texts, Orwell's response to these questions takes the form of a "guerrilla" orientation which seeks to transgress and transform authoritative boundaries between identities and power /knowledge formations, and which attempts to promote a "looser", "more fluid" sense of human identity. Guerrilla warfare is a practice which maintains an uneasy relation with the "regular armies" of identity (with, that is, party organizations, the State, theoretical paradigms, primary meanings of words and symbols, existing language games), which attempts to seek the invisibilities surrounding identity, and which also attempts to undermine (or at least nurture a suspicion of) its own position on the terrain of power, knowledge, and identity.
3. Following the introduction, the second chapter discusses interpretations of Orwell's thought by N. Jacobson, J. Shklar, S. Macey, D. Beddoe, B. Campbell, M. Zuckert, and M. Morris. This helps to distinguish the interpretation offered here from others, and to locate Orwell vis-a-vis Camus, Foucault, and Bentham (the latter task being a subsidiary exercise of the thesis). Chapter three deals primarily with Orwell's texts prior to 1984, especially with often neglected texts such as his poem "On a Ruined Farm Near the His Master's Voice Gramophone Factory", his book reviews, and essays such as "Inside the Whale", "New Words", "Not Counting Niggers", "Marrakech", "Shooting an Elephant", and "Notes on Nationalism". This serves to frame chapter four, which deals primarily with 1984, within a context provided by a reading of his earlier writings that is sensitive to the themes of language, ontology, and orientation toward political identity. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of postfoundationalism and history, and then attempts to disrupt the authoritative closure of a conclusion by offering an "impressionistic" afterword that briefly discusses contemporary writers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Kuhn, Dallmayr, and Walker. On a final note, it is suggested that 1984 may be read as a commentary on J.S. Mill's On Liberty.