Orwell abuse
January 1, 2008 4:14 AM Subscribe
David Rieff of the Columbia Journalism Review has written an essay in which he says that we should treat George Orwell merely as a writer and not as a guide. [more inside]
He writes: "Orwell died fifty-seven years ago, when the Cold War was in its infancy, the European colonial empires still existed, the global predominance of the United States was not clear (to Orwell at least), globalization and the information economy did not exist, the mass migration of the people of the Global South to the rich world had not yet begun, feminism had not yet transformed the family, and neither the Internet nor the biological revolution had taken place. To claim that one can deduce from what Orwell said and what one believes he stood for in his own time what he would have thought of the early twenty-first century is either a vulgar quest for an authority to ratify one’s own views, a fantasy about the transferability of the past to the present, or both."
I think he is wrong. 1984, for example, was a satire of its time. But it was also a warning.
Do you agree? If so, what else do you think Orwell warned us about?
He writes: "Orwell died fifty-seven years ago, when the Cold War was in its infancy, the European colonial empires still existed, the global predominance of the United States was not clear (to Orwell at least), globalization and the information economy did not exist, the mass migration of the people of the Global South to the rich world had not yet begun, feminism had not yet transformed the family, and neither the Internet nor the biological revolution had taken place. To claim that one can deduce from what Orwell said and what one believes he stood for in his own time what he would have thought of the early twenty-first century is either a vulgar quest for an authority to ratify one’s own views, a fantasy about the transferability of the past to the present, or both."
I think he is wrong. 1984, for example, was a satire of its time. But it was also a warning.
Do you agree? If so, what else do you think Orwell warned us about?
This post was deleted for the following reason: Posting a link to an op-ed, stating your opinion about the op-ed, and soliciting the opinions of others with conversation prompts: not really how a front page post should work. I know you didn't mean ill, but this is not a great way to post, and getting defensive in the thread doesn't help. -- cortex
Feminism => we can never know Orwell's stance on indefinite war abroad and warrantless wiretapping at home.
posted by fleacircus at 4:35 AM on January 1, 2008
posted by fleacircus at 4:35 AM on January 1, 2008
Chatfilter.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:43 AM on January 1, 2008
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:43 AM on January 1, 2008
How dare we take serious lessons from writings which have stood the test of time. To do so is "not to honor [them] but to deny their specific gravity".
posted by honest knave at 4:59 AM on January 1, 2008
posted by honest knave at 4:59 AM on January 1, 2008
I think he is wrong.
I think you should post this to your own blog. One link, op-ed does not a good metafilter post make.
posted by Dave Faris at 5:54 AM on January 1, 2008 [1 favorite]
I think you should post this to your own blog. One link, op-ed does not a good metafilter post make.
posted by Dave Faris at 5:54 AM on January 1, 2008 [1 favorite]
Feminism => we can never know Orwell's stance on indefinite war abroad and warrantless wiretapping at home.Well, no. But given that one of his examples about how people abuse Orwell is that they claim he would have thought that "political correctness" was totalitarianism, it's worth pointing out that he never got a chance to weigh in on modern feminism or talk about how people ought to behave in a multicultural Britain.
I think Reiff has a point. The Orwell problem is mostly that a lot of Americans read 1984 and/or Animal Farm in high school, so Orwell is the go-to literary reference for a lot of not-very-smart, not-very-thoughtful, not-very-well-read people who don't even know what Orwell was really about. He's the patron literary saint of the adolescent right-winger, which would have driven Orwell up the wall had he lived long enough to see it. He's also, apparently, the go-to thinker for obnoxious British blow-hards who move to America because Americans assign anyone 20 extra IQ points just for having a British accent. (Let's face it: nobody would take Christopher Hitchens seriously if he'd stayed in Britain, where he'd be judged on his own merits. Americans fawn over him because British accents sound *smart*, plus the not-very-smart etc. adolescent set like to think he's the second coming of George Orwell, the only "serious thinker" they've ever read, other than Ayn Rand.) I think that part of what Reiff is doing here is gently calling out Hitchens, who certainly deserves it.
posted by craichead at 6:07 AM on January 1, 2008
Cheers Dave. I posted it here and on my own blog because I think, at the start of 2008, the question is incredibly pertinent. For me Orwell becomes more prescient as time goes on, not less. For an serious journal like the CJR to try and place his work firmly in the past deserves debate, both here and elsewhere.
posted by MrMerlot at 6:09 AM on January 1, 2008
posted by MrMerlot at 6:09 AM on January 1, 2008
ahem One link, op-ed does not a good metafilter post make.
Hark at the pot calling the kettle black
posted by MrMerlot at 6:12 AM on January 1, 2008
Hark at the pot calling the kettle black
posted by MrMerlot at 6:12 AM on January 1, 2008
The laughable claims from the right that Orwell would have joined them in serving and apologising for entrenched power are largely the result of them believing their own filtered version of history and what communist and socialist movements were.
Orwell was shot through the throat whilst serving in a communist militia fighting fascism. Just because he saw Stalinism for what it was (at first hand in Barcelona) in no way suggests he would have moved to the right, and nothing in his later writing suggests he did. Even when he turned over the list of CP members to British secret services this was likely motivated by an understanding of what the Comintern had become.
As to the lasting value of his writing, of course that remains although history has moved on. No-one has stopped reading Montaigne because we no longer face a France torn apart by the Wars of Religion. Both essayists rose above their personal flaws, particular circumstances and the ideological conflicts of their time to say something larger about the human condition.
posted by Abiezer at 6:25 AM on January 1, 2008 [2 favorites]
Orwell was shot through the throat whilst serving in a communist militia fighting fascism. Just because he saw Stalinism for what it was (at first hand in Barcelona) in no way suggests he would have moved to the right, and nothing in his later writing suggests he did. Even when he turned over the list of CP members to British secret services this was likely motivated by an understanding of what the Comintern had become.
As to the lasting value of his writing, of course that remains although history has moved on. No-one has stopped reading Montaigne because we no longer face a France torn apart by the Wars of Religion. Both essayists rose above their personal flaws, particular circumstances and the ideological conflicts of their time to say something larger about the human condition.
posted by Abiezer at 6:25 AM on January 1, 2008 [2 favorites]
I think the problem is that Rieff wants to believe that the society of 2008 has some how evolved and left behind the world that Orwell feared and warned about. Orwell, however, often addressed principles that are more ingrained in human nature than many want to admit. His argument against Communism wasn't about Stalinist Communism, it was that Communism could produce Stalins. This type of thinking then can be applied to everything else that he addressed. 1984 was about what human nature could easily allow to happen, not human nature circa 1930's or 1940's. This is why Orwell's work continues to resonate a half century after his death. I suppose you could call Rieff an optimist, but the bones that make the body of human nature have not changed, regardless of the Internet, Feminism, and everything else.
posted by Atreides at 6:28 AM on January 1, 2008
posted by Atreides at 6:28 AM on January 1, 2008
Does this Rieff fellow just want people to stop pointing to Orwell for support of their pet political propositions? Not only is this "essay" futile, it seems arbitrarily aimed at a very narrow set: why not exhort against using any written work authored more than, say, fifty-seven years ago? After all, any such work would have been authored when, or before, "the Cold War was in its infancy, the European colonial empires still existed, the global predominance of the United States was not clear (to Orwell at least), globalization and the information economy did not exist, the mass migration of the people of the Global South to the rich world had not yet begun, feminism had not yet transformed the family, and neither the Internet nor the biological revolution had taken place." What is so special about Orwell in this respect?
"The truth is that none of the people who express themselves so recklessly and self-servingly about what Orwell would have thought and where he would have stood have the right to opine believably about either." [emphasis added]
They don't have the right to opine believably? Or do they just lack the capacity?
A poorly written, pointless, uninsightful piece of dross... I want my time back.
Besides, Orwell would clearly be a neocon today, because he drank his tea without sugar.
posted by dilettanti at 6:36 AM on January 1, 2008
"The truth is that none of the people who express themselves so recklessly and self-servingly about what Orwell would have thought and where he would have stood have the right to opine believably about either." [emphasis added]
They don't have the right to opine believably? Or do they just lack the capacity?
A poorly written, pointless, uninsightful piece of dross... I want my time back.
Besides, Orwell would clearly be a neocon today, because he drank his tea without sugar.
posted by dilettanti at 6:36 AM on January 1, 2008
1. I have never read a book called 1984 - and certainly not one by George Orwell.
2. Christopher Hitchens is well known in the UK. People who think his accent gives him credence are overlooking the many other meaningless things which work against him - his open alcoholism and his former Marxist tendencies would be enough in America to sink anyone who didn't have his wit.
3. Everyone's an expert on Orwell, and it follows that everyone can write an article like the linked one. There's only one real error that can be made, in fact, and he made it. See point one.
posted by topynate at 6:41 AM on January 1, 2008
2. Christopher Hitchens is well known in the UK. People who think his accent gives him credence are overlooking the many other meaningless things which work against him - his open alcoholism and his former Marxist tendencies would be enough in America to sink anyone who didn't have his wit.
3. Everyone's an expert on Orwell, and it follows that everyone can write an article like the linked one. There's only one real error that can be made, in fact, and he made it. See point one.
posted by topynate at 6:41 AM on January 1, 2008
I think the problem is that Rieff wants to believe that the society of 2008 has some how evolved and left behind the world that Orwell feared and warned about.From what little I know about Rieff, I doubt it. He's not exactly famous for being the happy, jolly type.
No-one has stopped reading Montaigne because we no longer face a France torn apart by the Wars of Religion.Yeah, but nobody walks around wearing a little What Would Montaigne Do bracelet, either. I don't think Rieff is saying that Orwell is worthless. I think he's saying that it's useless to try to justify positions on particular policies by claiming that Orwell would have supported them. Hitchens thinks that Orwell would have recognized "Islamofascism" as a huge threat that needed to be addressed, the way he thought the Nazis needed to be fought and defeated. But it's just as likely that he would have focused on Guantanamo and "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation techniques" and all the rancid doublespeak that we hear coming out of the Bush administration. We don't know where Orwell would have come down on the GWoT. We don't know that he would have been right. As far as I'm concerned, asking "What Would Orwell Do" is just as silly and ahistorical as asking what the Founding Fathers would have thought about religion in public schools. We can't know, because we don't know how modernity would have changed their thinking. Plus, there's something a little icky, as far as I'm concerned, about people who appeal to authority and cite any writer chapter and verse. Orwell wasn't right about everything. He was a very good writer with some really important insights, but he was a mere mortal who was capable of making mistakes. We can use his concepts to help figure out what's going on in the world, but we can't cite Orwell to tell us whether to invade Iran or vote for Giuiliani or Obama.
Incidentally, google reveals that Hitchens and Rieff are (or at least were) good friends and that Rieff was best man at Hitchens' wedding. So I'm still going with the theory that this one is aimed at Hitchens's Orwell fetish.
posted by craichead at 6:47 AM on January 1, 2008
People who think his accent gives him credence are overlooking the many other meaningless things which work against him - his open alcoholism and his former Marxist tendencies would be enough in America to sink anyone who didn't have his wit.No. In the U.S., his alcoholism and former Marxism actually enhance his standing. They make him seem very authentic and exotic. Not that either thing disqualifies an American from being an intellectual celebrity here, either. David Horowitz gets a lot of mileage out of being a former Marxist, and nobody has ever accused him of having wit.
posted by craichead at 7:00 AM on January 1, 2008
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posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 4:18 AM on January 1, 2008