scholarly journals The Intoxication of Power in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932)

IJOHMN ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-125
Author(s):  
Hadjer Khatir

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949)and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) stand as two powerful works of art that emanated from a mere disorder and fragmentation. To put it differently, this work of art emanated from a world that underwent an extremely rigorous political transformations and cultural seismology. This is a world that has witnessed an overwhelming dislocation. All those upheavals brought into being a new life, that is to say, a reshuffled life .A new life brings forwards a new art. This research, accordingly, attempts to put all its focus on two modernist visionary works of art that have enhanced a completely new system of thought and perceived the past, the present, and even the future with an entirely new consciousness. In the world of Nineteen Eighty Four and Brave New World, power seems to get beyond of what is supposedly politically legitimate. This power has paved the way for the emergence of a totalitarian system; I would rather call it a totalitarian virus. This system has emerged with the ultimate purpose of deadening the spirit of individualism, rendering the classes nothing but “docile masses”. I will be accordingly analysing how power becomes intoxicating. In other words, I will attempt to give a keen picture of how power becomes no longer over things, but rather over men according to Nietzsche’s philosophical perception of “The Will to Power”.

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-140
Author(s):  
Mico Savic

In this paper, author deals with Heidegger's account of the modern age as the epoch based on Western metaphysics. In the first part of the paper, he shows that, according to Heidegger, modern interpretation of the reality as the world picture, is essentially determined by Descartes' philosophy. Then, author exposes Heidegger's interpretation of the turn which already took place in Plato's metaphysics and which made possible Descartes' metaphysics and modern epoch. In the second part of the paper, author explores Heidegger's interpretation of science and technology as shoots of very metaphysics. Heidegger emphasizes that the essence of technology corresponds to the essence of subjectivity and shows how the metaphysics of subjectivity subsequently finds its end in Nietzsche's metaphysics of the will to power, as the last word of Western philosophy. In the concluding part, author argues that the contemporary processes of globalization can be just understood as processes of completion of metaphysics. They can be identified as a global rule of the essence of technology. On the basis of Heidegger's vision of overcoming metaphysics, author concludes that it opens the possibility of a philosophy of finitude which points to dialogue with the Other as a way of resolving the key practical issues of the contemporary world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 107-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikki Usher ◽  
Matt Carlson

The network society is moving into some sort of middle age, or has at least normalized into the daily set of expectations people have for how they live their lives, not to mention consume news and information. In their adolescence, the technological and temporal affordances that have come with these new digital technologies were supposed to make the world better, or least they could have. There was much we did not foresee, such as the way that this brave new world would turn journalism into distributed content, not only taking away news organizations’ gatekeeping power but also their business model. This is indeed a midlife crisis. The present moment provides a vantage point for stocktaking and the mix of awe, nostalgia, and ruefulness that comes with maturity.


APRIA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Marijke Goeting

During the past decade, computers have broken through the barrier of human time. Today, computers can process data in milli-, micro- and even nanoseconds and can (inter) act autonomously in time frames that exceed our capacity to perceive and respond to. This produces a fundamental problem – a gap between human time and the time of computers – and raises important questions: how do big data and fast computation affect our experience and understanding of time? If a computer is able to deal with the world faster than we can, are we doomed to live forever in the past, however near the present? Or are we dealing with a technological extension of the present, and how might we be able to understand and experience this? By analysing theory and works of art, this text examines how to deal with the shock produced by microtemporal technologies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 61-88
Author(s):  
Maren Tova Linett

Chapter 2 takes a disability studies approach to aging by viewing Brave New World (1932) as a thought experiment that explores the value of old age. Reading the novel alongside Ezekiel Emanuel’s claim that it would be best for everyone to die at around age seventy-five, before their abilities begin to decline, the chapter reads the absence of old people in the World State as an aspect of its dystopia. The chapter first argues that the persistent youth embraced by the society robs life of its narrative arc and thereby of an important aspect of its meaning. It then explores the reasons suggested by the novel that such a sacrifice of life narratives is not worthwhile, even to avoid periods of possible disability or frailty. Brave New World makes clear that the excision of old age has significant political, moral, and emotional costs.


1994 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 684-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa A. Orlie

Predominant views of political deliberation represent it as a matter either of “contemplation without interest” or of interest without contemplation. Whether we claim that political thinking can transcend power or that it is simply a vehicle for it, we abet a nihilistic political culture and authorize the thoughtless exercise of power. What each view denies—or insufficiently explores—is thinking's capacity to transfigure “interest” and power without pretending to transcend them. By contrast, political perspectivism incorporates multiple perspectives in an effort thoughtfully to respond to the will-to-power that attends our location in the world. We need political spaces if we are to become responsive agents of power, because we often can neither recognize the effects of our activities without the benefit of others' perspectives nor alter those effects by our efforts alone.


1996 ◽  
pp. 456-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Arrighi

History continually messes up the neat conceptual frameworks and the more or less elegant theoretical speculations with which we endeavor to understand the past and forecast the future of the world we live in. In recent years, two events stand out as eminently subversive of the intellectual landscape: the sudden demise of the USSR as one of the two main loci of world power and the gradual rise of East Asia to epicenter of world -scale processes of capital accumulation. Although each event has received more than its due of scholarly attention, it is their joint occurrence that has the most significant conceptual and theoretical implications.


Zootaxa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5020 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-80
Author(s):  
CHRIS J. HODGSON

In the past, various authors have placed many species in genera that are now understood to be restricted to other regions of the world. Thus, in Africa, species of soft scale (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha: Coccomorpha: Coccidae) with this problem are those in Ceronema Maskell, a genus probably restricted to Australia; Ceroplastodes Cockerell, probably restricted to the New World; and Inglisia Maskell, which is restricted to New Zealand. The placement of these species is reviewed here. Four of the known Ceronema species are placed in three new monotypic genera, Neoceronema gen. nov., Illovococcus gen. nov. and Bugandacoccus gen. nov., as Neoceronema africanum (Macfie) comb. nov., N. brachystegiae (Hall) comb. nov., Illovococcus mobilis (Brain) comb. nov. and Bugandacoccus gowdeyi (Newstead) comb. nov.; Ceroplastodes ritchiei Laing and C. zavatarii Bellio are transferred to Drepanococcus Williams & Watson, as D. ritchiei (Laing) comb. nov. and D. zavattarii (Bellio), comb. nov., and Inglisia grevilliae Hall, I. pluvialis Hodgson and I. theobromae Newstead are transferred to Cryptinglisia Cockerell as C. grevilliae (Hall) comb. nov., C. pluvialis (Hodgson) comb. nov. and C. theobromae (Newstead) comb. nov. Keys are provided to all Drepanococcus and Cryptinglisia species, and all the African species discussed are illustrated. In addition, another new genus of African Coccidae is described, Testudovestis gen. nov., to take a new species somewhat similar to Eucalymnatus Cockerell: T. africana spec. nov. In addition, a new species of Coccus L.: Coccus moorei, spec. nov., and a new species of mealybug (Heliococcus tinglei spec. nov., Pseudococcidae), are described, both from mainland Africa. The lecanodiaspid Lecanodiaspis zygophylli Hodgson is also recorded from Nigeria for the first time.  


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document