On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691113610 ISBN 13: 9780691113616

Verlag: University Press Group, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is among the most widely read books in the world. For more than 50 years, it has been regarded as a morality tale for the possible future of modern society, a future involving nothing less than extinction of humanity itself. Does Nineteen Eighty-Four remain relevant in our new century? The editors of this book assembled a distinguished group of philosophers, literary specialists, political commentators, historians, and lawyers and asked them to take a wide-ranging and uninhibited look at that question. The editors deliberately avoided Orwell scholars in an effort to call forth a fresh and diverse range of responses to the major work of one of the most durable literary figures among twentieth-century English writers. As Nineteen Eighty-Four protagonist Winston Smith has admirers on the right, in the center, and on the left, the contributors similarly represent a wide range of political, literary, and moral viewpoints. The Cold War that has so often been linked to Orwell's novel ended with more of a whimper than a bang, but most of the issues of concern to him remain alive in some form today: censorship, scientific surveillance, power worship, the autonomy of art, the meaning of democracy, relations between men and women, and many others. The contributors bring a variety of insightful and contemporary perspectives to bear on these questions.

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Edited by Abbott Gleason, Jack Goldsmith, & Martha C. Nussbaum

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A very strong and attractive work, On Nineteen Eighty-Four is a fresh and frontal confrontation of the question of whether Orwell had it right about technology and totalitarianism--or whether the usual clichés and stereotypes about the Orwellian view are right. The result is a very engaging body of thought."--Robert Weisberg, Stanford Law School

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ON NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

ORWELL AND OUR FUTURE

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2005 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-11361-6

Contents

Dedicatory Foreword Barbara S. Kirschner, M.D..........................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments.........................................................................................................................................................xiiiIntroduction Abbott Gleason and Martha C. Nussbaum.....................................................................................................................1PART I: POLITICS AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION...........................................................................................................................11A Defense of Poesy (The Treatise of Julia) Elaine Scarry...............................................................................................................13Doublespeak and the Minority of One Homi K. Bhabha.....................................................................................................................29Of Beasts and Men: Orwell on Beastliness Margaret Drabble..............................................................................................................38Does Literature Work as Social Science? The Case of George Orwell Richard A. Epstein...................................................................................49PART II: TRUTH, OBJECTIVITY, AND PROPAGANDA.............................................................................................................................71Puritanism and Power Politics during the Cold War: George Orwell and Historical Objectivity Abbott Gleason.............................................................73Rorty and Orwell on Truth James Conant.................................................................................................................................86From Ingsoc and Newspeak to Amcap, Amerigood, and Marketspeak Edward S. Herman.........................................................................................112PART III: POLITICAL COERCION............................................................................................................................................125Mind Control in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Fictional Concepts Become Operational Realities in Jim Jones's Jungle Experiment Philip G. Zimbardo.....................127Whom Do You Trust? What Do You Count On? Darius Rejali.................................................................................................................155PART IV: TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY.........................................................................................................................................181Orwell versus Huxley: Economics, Technology, Privacy, and Satire Richard A. Posner.....................................................................................183On the Internet and the Benign Invasions of Nineteen Eighty-Four Lawrence Lessig.......................................................................................212The Self-Preventing Prophecy; or, How a Dose of Nightmare Can Help Tame Tomorrow's Perils David Brin...................................................................222PART V: SEX AND POLITICS................................................................................................................................................231Sexual Freedom and Political Freedom Cass R. Sunstein..................................................................................................................233Sex, Law, Power, and Community Robin West..............................................................................................................................242Nineteen Eighty-Four, Catholicism, and the Meaning of Human Sexuality John Haldane.....................................................................................261CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................................................277The Death of Pity: Orwell and American Political Life Martha C. Nussbaum...............................................................................................279Contributors............................................................................................................................................................301Index...................................................................................................................................................................305

Chapter One

A Defense of Poesy (The Treatise of Julia)

Editor's note: This treatise on poetry was found among the ashes of Oceania. The author is known to us only by the single name Julia. The treatise survives because it was etched in metal, specifically the metal casing of a small lipstick canister. It was found in a mound of soft ash where paper records were routinely incinerated. So microscopic is the writing that it at first appeared to archaeologists only as an ornate wreathing on the case. The fire of the incineration had reacted with the metal in such a way that these tiny marks became burnished and glowing, as though inviting further scrutiny. Once given that scrutiny, the delicate wreathing—which had itself occasioned much excitement since ornamentation was thought to have been nonexistent in Oceania—quickly revealed the secret text contained there. Transcription proved fairly straightforward; the only difficulties came from the fact that no spaces separate the words, and from the fact that once the author finished writing vertically (beginning each line at the bottom of the canister and moving upward), she then turned the canister ninety degrees, continuing her text by now cutting perpendicularly across the already existing lines.

Statements made by Julia inside the treatise suggest what expert analysis of the incision marks confirms: the etching implement was almost certainly a razor blade, a tool regarded as semiprecious in this civilization. Irregularities in the wreathing— whose clarity declines, then resumes, five times—indicate the use of five separate implements. The treatise is addressed throughout to a lover. Occasionally the author refers to "my brother." The scholarly consensus about the identity of the lover and disagreement about the identity of the brother are summarized (along with other lines of scholarly inquiry) in an annotated bibliography now in preparation.

The treatise is widely considered remarkable for its brilliant feat of thinking carried out in a civilization where even modest acts of thinking were discouraged. Occasionally Julia's meaning becomes unclear, and scholars have debated whether the author has lost her way in such passages or whether she has instead made her way onto paths where we have not yet successfully followed. The treatise belongs in a line that includes Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie and Shelley's Defence of Poetry, though its claims for art go beyond either. Sidney urged that poetry delights and instructs. Shelley said poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. The work that Julia's treatise assigns to poetry is anterior to either instruction or legislation, since it claims that poesis makes thinking itself possible.

Though the treatise is undated, metallurgical analysis of the inscriptions places its...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University Press Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691113610
• ISBN 13: 9780691113616
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 330
• Herausgeber: Gleason Abbott, Goldsmith Jack, Nussbaum Martha C.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Princeton University Press; https://press.princeton.edu/books; ; 7th Floor, New South Building; PRINCETON; NJ; 8544; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland