Literature and Media Series Entry #3


Remaining mid-20th century for now, our next case-study is the over-quoted 1984 by George Orwell. Within posthumanism anxieties, my scope is on the nature of the forces controlling Oceania. In the book, a lengthy section is given to the words of Emmanuel Goldstein as Winston reads his manifesto for the revolution - 'The Brotherhood.” Goldstein insinuates that Big Brother is not even a real person, but merely an image of relatable humanity to elicit emotional connection from the people. What more powerful leader than one who does not even exist - ergo, cannot die - especially in a society where history is controlled every day, and so even age can be re-adjusted. This all makes the later twist that much more harrowing, when Winston finds that even that manifesto was written by the Party. When he asks O'Brien if The Brotherhood is real, he is told "you will never know."



    But an accurate translation of that answer may be: “I don’t know.”  There’s no reason to suggest that he knows, or, indeed, if anyone does: if O’Brien was put through the same torture as Winston, and his torturers also the same, the spiral may go so deep as to render human dictatorship unimportant. If everyone’s either too scared or too devoted to their system to question it, and they know what to do to uphold it perpetually, a head becomes unnecessary. The 1940s George Orwell would never live to see or imagine ideas of robots, cyborgs, androids or AI, but long before that he had conceptualised what was an absolutely automated, self-sustaining and posthuman society.


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