Writing of ‘Literature and Totalitarianism’.

Over recent months Orwell’s June 1941 radio essay ‘Literature and Totalitarianism’ has been flitting in and out of my mind. Whatever the dangers of wilful ahistoricism, Orwell’s depiction of the totalitarian modus operandi in this essay, to be more thoroughly developed in 1984, speak directly not just to my current institution but to the politics of the vatan.

There’s a crucial paragraph or two where Orwell wrote,

And then – remember that he is writing in June 1941, with the British Empire is at its territorial zenith and with the Nazi-Soviet pact still intact – he clarifies as follows,

He then explains what is distinctive about totalitarianism in a manner which has stood the test of time, unlike his characterising of liberalism and socialism which now seem touchingly naive. What Orwell means by totalitarianism doesn’t just repeat old ideas of, for example, total control, but prefigures the incertitude, the ambivalence and the loss of anchor which marks the postmodern. Thus,

Totalitarian power is not just that it is comprehensive and exhaustive and in those senses total. The exercise of totalitarian power is total insofar as it itself is not governed by its own rules or logic. Governors of a totalitarian order do not, indeed cannot, themselves keep to their own erratic rules. Totalitarian power is one in which what was certain was never; that which was fixed never was. It is the unceasing uncertainty which is total.

The totalitarian order survives as much through the exhaustion of its subjects as through its direct elimination of its errant subjects.

The first part of TS Eliot – of whom Orwell was no great fan – and his “The Hollow Men” (1925),

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

These stuffed men are the subjects of a totalitarian order for they can only whisper together, both quiet and meaningless, because no clear voice can declare for themselves yes or no, good or bad. Today’s yes is not the same as yesterday’s yes, tomorrow’s no is at odds with today’s no. Who knows the why or wherefore ? Not us, the hollow men. Orwell illustrates the shiftiness of totalitarianism by invoking the immediately pressing example of the (secret) Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939, which was fully exercised in mid September 1939.

 

But Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia are easy examples of totalitarianism. They have become almost cartoon cutouts of totalitarianism. More intriguing, more subtle and more dangerous are the non-militarised and supposedly non-violent totalitarian orders.

And so back to literature. Or writing and enquiry more generally. Orwell typically presents the author, artist and literature in the face of power as a simple issue, which I’d echo. That which has pretense at significance has to aim to endure. It cannot be fleeting and fickle. That which is serious is slow in coming and requires time to become present. It cannot be created. No click to send. No press to continue. No ‘like’ to love. No ‘unlike’ to dissent. No ‘tweet’ for truth. But in 1941 he expressed it like this,

 

 

The essay had begun with the contention, which can hardly be denied, that

 

The totalitarian order, insofar as its rule is inconsistent, shifting, transient and capricious (hypocrisy doesn’t get anywhere near the matter) disallows stability nor anchor nor, therefore, any endurance which may merit the term history. In this light it is mistaken to assume that a totalitarian order is one which is, for example, essentially militarist or ordered through great physical  somatic violence although they may well be so. Rather the totalitarian order is 0ne to be found in micro- as well as macro-social orders, and may manifest themselves in otherwise seemingly ‘peaceful’ and ‘civilised’ institutions and societies. When Orwell eventually returns to the totalitarian order in 1984 he rather melodramatically refers, through Smith’s voice, to a totalitarian vision of the future “imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Of course this is nowhere nasty enough; this is rather commonplace cruelty. Instead the totalitarian order of the present is that order which can impose incessant and inconsistent change on its subjects, who can discern neither rhyme nor reason for today’s age-old new rule. The subjects of a truly totalitarian institution or society are those who – to use a Marxist term – are totally alienated i.e, they cannot determine anything for themselves, because in large part they cannot stop for a moment to consider who ‘themselves’ are. Back to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” Hollowed men; stuffed men.

And for the full essay by George Orwell, from which the excerpts above were taken, see ‘Literature and totalitarianism’