Abstract
In 1983 a specific paradigmatic way of reading Orwell’s novel develops, which closely associates the novel with the threat of technological data surveillance. While the novel was traditionally interpreted allegorically, this new paradigm re-conceived the novel as a dystopian vision of West Germany’s future. The novel’s impact for an emerging movement against data surveillance becomes explainable against the backdrop of the communication patterns of the peace movement of the early 1980s. The paradigm of interpretation developed by the movement against data surveillance drew from the dystopian communication cultivated by the peace movement as a means of mobilization. It gave expression to a world experience of political activism. The novel’s form-language created a chain of equivalence (Laclau/Mouffe) between the peace and data surveillance movement. Identity between the movements emerged through the dystopian pattern of communication. The dystopian paradigm actualized this pattern and made it fecund for the data surveillance movement.
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Notes
- 1.
OED Online, March 2016, s.v. “Big Brother, n.,” entry 2c. http://www.oed.com.331745941.erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/view/Entry/18848?redirectedFrom=big+brother& (accessed March 23, 2016).
- 2.
Duden, s.v. “Big Brother, der,” http://www.duden.de/node/802008/revisions/1602580/view (accessed February 16, 2016).
- 3.
The novel was published in German translation in 1950.
- 4.
Noted by “Ohne Drohgebärde, ohne Angst.” 1983. Spiegel (16): pp. 17–23, April 18, 20. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14019545.html, 20; also Hubert (1983, pp. 258–259).
- 5.
- 6.
Massing also points toward the close association between the peace and the boycott movements when he speaks, referring to a terminology coined by Josef Isensee, of a movement that in large parts consists of a “‘bio-pacifist’ fundamental opposition” (Massing 1987, pp. 96–97).
- 7.
Burgess, Anthony. 1983. “Von der Ohnmacht unserer Eierköpfe.” Welt, December 31.
- 8.
A contemporary Spiegel article from April 1983 is oblivious to the initiative of the IDK in September 1982, which emphasizes the importance of the date December 1982 for the kick-off of the protest movement (“Ohne Drohgebärde, ohne Angst.” 1983. Der Spiegel (16): pp. 17–23, April 18, quotation on p. 20. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14019545.html).
- 9.
“Gläserner Mensch.” 1982. Der Spiegel (29): pp. 64–66, July 19. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14349954.html. In fact, the topic of data surveillance can be traced even further back in the history of Der Spiegel. There is another article entitled “Gläserner Mensch” from February 1978, and already in 1978 Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is not far away: “Indeed, after the preliminary decision in Hinterzarten [where a conference of the interior ministers of the German Länder took place, MK], the Federal Republic of Germany has come a bit closer to Orwell’s nightmare scenario of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Because Maihofer’s law [Maihofer: Federal Minister of the Interior, MK], which most of the ministers responsible for the police wish to deploy as a weapon against terrorism, is supposed to nationally standardize the law for registration and to adapt it to the ‘progressing automation’. After a first reading of the draft, the law professor Wilhelm Steinmüller says: ‘Total surveillance of the individual would be possible’” (“Gläserner Mensch.” 1978. Der Spiegel (7): pp. 32–33, February 13. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-40616382.html, quotation on pp. 32–33).
- 10.
“Die neue Welt von 1984.”
- 11.
Weder, Hans. 1984. “Orwell und Zwingli. Betrachtungen zu einem merkwürdigen Zufall.” NZZ, March 24.
- 12.
Steinbuch, Karl. 1983. “Wir haben die Söhne dem Mond geopfert.” Welt, December 31.
- 13.
Furthermore, Orwell is hardly the first to write dystopian novels. Prominent precursors are Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (first published in 1924 in English translation) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (published in 1932).
- 14.
These arguments can be found in Castoriadis (1987) in the subchapters “The Break-Up of the Monad and the Triadic Phase” (pp. 300–308), “The Constitution of Reality” (pp. 308–311), “Sublimation and the Socialization of the Psyche” (pp. 311–316), and “The Social-Historical Content of Sublimation” (pp. 316–320).
- 15.
The distinctions drawn by literary criticism between metaphor, allegory, and symbol (see, e.g., the respective entries in Metzler Literaturlexikon 1990) are of secondary importance for this work, since what is relevant for the question under consideration here is that something is made to stand for something else, which may generally be summarized under the term “metaphor.”
- 16.
Schoeck, Helmut. 1984. “Der Mann und sein verkanntes Werk. Vor 36 Jahren schrieb George Orwell ‘1984’. Was von seinen Visionen wurde bis 1984 Wirklichkeit, was blieb Utopie?” WeltaS, January 1.
- 17.
However, he believes that there is no need to overemphasize this threat. More importantly, there is yet another strand of development in the Western societies of the 1980s which deserves attention. Accordingly, instead of a prophecy, the novel is a description of the past, because the present is characterized not by an abundance of control but by an absence of it. This can be gathered from the treatment of young hackers in the USA, for instance, who are treated with utmost care, “because the geniuses of the nation shall not be offended.” See Schoeck, “Der Mann.”
- 18.
Bergsdorf, Wolfgang. 1983. “Zweck der Macht ist die Macht. George Orwells Roman ‘1984’ – Prophetie oder Utopie?” Zeit (10), March 4.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
For a description of the development of the concept in the theories of Laclau and Mouffe see New Theories of Discourse by Jacob Torfing (1999, pp. 124–131). In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Mouffe ((1985) 2001) did not explicitly develop the “constitutive outside.” However, in their ensuing work both further developed the term, especially in the sense that the dislocations the social develops to cover up its immanent lack can, but need not, be antagonisms. Torfing focuses on Laclau’s developments, while for the further use of the term by Chantal Mouffe see her essay “Politics and the Political” (Mouffe 2005, pp. 14–16).
- 21.
The Western left-intellectuals are here defined as puppets of the Soviet Union, which again dislocates the internal threat to the outside.
- 22.
D/R/S. 1984. “Die Welt hat die ‘Prophezeiung’ Orwells widerlegt. In einem ‘l’ Unità’-Interview formuliert der Generalsekretär der Kommunistischen Partei Italiens, Enrico Berlinguer, seine Vorstellungen von der Zukunft.” FR, February 22.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Corinna Franz remarks that for the first West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the architect of post-war West Germany, stability, security, and prosperity served as the bulwarks against the “communist seduction” (Franz 2014, pp. 150–152). The patriarchal and authoritarian structures of the Adenauer state can be traced back to the general search for stability (Doering-Manteuffel 1991, pp. 16–17). The paradox that we encounter between Adenauer’s notion of freedom and his authoritarian political style may be explained by his understanding of religion as the guarantor of freedom (Franz 2014, pp. 148–150), in which freedom has to be seen as the freedom to believe in God. Communism was thus the natural antagonist to this conception of freedom.
- 25.
For an overview of the social developments of the 1960s see Hickethier (2003).
- 26.
“Die neue Welt von 1984.”
- 27.
Steinbuch, “Söhne dem Mond.”
- 28.
The notion of doubling has been developed by Iser in the chapter “Renaissance Pastoralism as a Paradigm of Literary Fictionality” (Iser 1993, pp. 22–86, see esp. pp. 79–86).
- 29.
“Die neue Welt von 1984.”
- 30.
See Berlinghoff (2013) for a description of the development of surveillance as a discourse among experts to one that mobilized lay people.
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Knapp, M. (2020). A Moving World: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In: Cultural Controversies in the West German Public Sphere. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40086-6_4
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