In the early stages of the Trump era, an internet search of the word “Orwellian” brings up a long list of recent, contesting definitions along with multiple articles deploying the term as an accusation against a given political opponent. “Orwellian nightmare” comes up to describe some aspect of an opponent’s platform or policy or the expression of a social movement. References to 1984, “Big Brother,” and “doublespeak” are lobbed as slander from one group back at the other as though the terms have no meaning at all, or as though both groups are equally guilty of the same charge. In “Politics and the English Language” Orwell speaks about the ways that terms like “fascism” and “democracy” are rendered meaningless when they’re entirely divorced from their historical roots and used as mere insult or validation—deriding an opponent’s political position or bolstering one’s own respectively. The wide use of the term Orwellian is disturbingly reminiscent of this redundancy. Beyond some “authentic” definition of the word, it makes you wonder about the implications two opposing political parties deploying the same term against each other with equal sense of ownership of its definition. Yet unlike “fascism” or “democracy,” the term Orwellian doesn’t have a specific political origin that we can dig up and analyze. Instead, it’s an invented literary adjective that derives from a generalization aiming to encompass some essential element of Orwell’s expression—specifically deriving from his books 1984 and Animal Farm. But Orwell wrote much more than these books, and much of his writing theorized the act of political writing itself and the problematic usages of political terms. In different essays and interviews Orwell describes himself as committed to interpretations of politics that are anti-essentialist and evolving. 1984 and Animal Farm were forms that he used to develop and express passing interpretations of an evolving political sphere.
In his analysis of Orwell’s politics and writing, Alex Woloch discusses Orwell’s political writing as a response to ever-changing events of the world. He further analyzes the connection between Orwell’s idea of himself as a political writer and his rejection of fixed definitions of politics. Orwell was opposed to any redundancy in political expression. He was highly suspicious of repeated uses of terms. It’s not only in “Politics and the English Language” that Orwell rejects repetitious use of political terms and categories. He wrote and commented extensively on his commitment to evolving, original thinking. Woloch explains that politics for Orwell was closely connected to the process of writing, which was something Orwell did every day. Each piece of political and literary expression that Orwell produced was part of a flowing and changing interpretation of current politics—1984 and Animal Farm are included in this. In this way, later references to 1984 as a frame imposed on later experiences are more than an anachronism.
Current, contending definitions of the term “Orwellian” are thus far from Orwell’s thinking, not only for how they reduce his thinking to the fleeting expressions of 1984 and Animal Farm; but because they reduce his expressions at all. Using Orwell’s writing as a fixed frame goes against Orwell’s stated intention as a political writer. The use of the term Orwellian thus contradicts Orwell’s concept of effective political language. Its repetition is a further degradation of Orwell’s thought. A more accurate use of "Orwellian" might refer to Orwell’s aspirations toward flexible, fluid, ever-changing, political thinking; yet to attempt to define his thinking or his mode, would also degrade his thought and mode. The challenge for every political thinker is, as Orwell states in “Politics and the English Language,” to think independently and originally in response to all the reductive expressions of a political moment.
Works Cited
Woloch, Alex. Or Orwell:Writing and Democratic Socialism Harvard. USA, 2016.
