Turning Romanticism on its Head: The Peripheral Symbolic Geography of Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin

Within the present paper, I aim to discuss how Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin have employed the peripheral symbolic geography of their two works (Brave New World and This Perfect Day) to articulate their debate between different sets of social values. Unlike other authors of negative utopias such as George Orwell or Yevgeny Zamyatin, neither Huxley nor Levin idealized pre-modern values. In order to highlight how the two articulated their views with the help of symbolic geography, I will also make use of Michel Foucault’s theoretical concepts of heterotopias, heterochrony as well as the ideas developed by the critics Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre in their seminal work Romanticism against the Tide of Modernity. My purpose is thus firstly to point out how and why Huxley and Levin divided the symbolic geography of their works in two parts as well as how they employed the Romantic critique of modernity. Secondly, I aim to show how despite using this analytical tool, they also employed symbolic geography with the purpose of turning the critique on its head, thus unveiling both its strong points as well as its shortcomings.

Viewing Orwellian Newspeak from the Angle of Linguistics: An “Economic” Redundancy

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has been widely studied, but not one of his important inventions in that novel. That is his Newspeak. From the perspective of linguistics, one of the most important characteristics of the development of language(s) is the feature of the economy, which means that language evolves in various ways to streamline and make it easier for its users to express themselves. This is not the case with the English variant "Newspeak" created by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is somehow simpler in form than standard English, which was named "Oldspeak", but "Newspeak" is actually in a sense simpler than "Oldspeak". Newspeak" is actually much more obscure than "Old speech" in a sense. The reason for this may be found in comparison with several typical language simplification movements. In order to investigate the issues, former researchers` findings would be referenced, and textual evidence would be found and discussed in the article.

Revolução dos bichos

Na Revolução dos Bichos, George Orwell apresenta, de forma lúdica e contundente, as vicissitudes da organização social, marcada pela exploração do forte pelo fraco. Apesar das reviravoltas e revoluções, as circunstâncias materiais acabam por, novamente, conduzir o desfecho da história a um patamar bastante próximo do ponto de partida. Embora o texto se refira a um momento histórico bastante específico – Revolução Russa de 1917 –, até os dias de hoje revela-se bastante atual, uma vez que o passado insiste em se refazer no futuro, diante da displicência do presente com a História.

“George Orwell Invented Journalism Studies”

To inaugurate our series of conversations with scholars in journalism studies with a view to securing some useful insights into the history and practice of journalism education, Prof. Richard Lance Keeble appeared an obvious choice. Now an Honorary Professor at Liverpool Hope University, Prof. Keeble was first director of the International Journalism MA, then director of the Journalism and Social Science BA, at City University, London (1984-2003). He was then appointed Professor of Journalism (2003-present) at Lincoln University where he also became acting head of the Lincoln School of Journalism (2010-2013) and later a Visiting Professor at Liverpool Hope University (2015-2019). Prof. Keeble has been the recipient of prestigious and distinguished prizes, namely the National Teaching Fellowship Award (2011) and the Lifetime Achievement Award for services to journalism education (2014), the latter bestowed by the Association for Journalism Education in the UK. Parallel to his academic career, Prof. Keeble has always been a practising journalist. On completion of his studies in Modern History at Keble College, Oxford University (1967-70), he started a career in journalism, first as sub editor at the Nottingham Guardian Journal/Evening Post (1970-73) and then at the Cambridge Evening News (1973-77). He was deputy editor, then editor, of The Teacher, the weekly newspaper of the National Union of Teachers (1977-84). His dual pedigree in journalism, as a practitioner and a professor, led him to take on many editorial responsibilities. He is emeritus editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication and Ethics and joint editor of George Orwell Studies and is also on the board of an impressive number of journals, among which are Journalism Studies, Digital Journalism, Journalism Education, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Media Ethics, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, to name just a few. Prof. Keeble was also Chair of the Orwell Society1 (2013-2020) and has authored or edited no less than 44 books. They include Ethics for Journalists and The Newspapers Handbook,2 respectively on their second and fifth editions, as well as several volumes on George Orwell, investigative journalism, and the British media. It was an honour and privilege to talk to Prof. Keeble in a phone interview on March 25, 2021. The conversation was transcribed while some passages were edited for clarity. I hereby express my immense gratitude for his time, generosity, expertise, and humour. It is such a thrill to start our series of interviews in a way that only makes us want more such conversations.

Fiction May Confront Theories. Locating Determinism of the Newspeak in G. Orwell’s 1984

The paper focuses on the relationships between theory and practice and the consequences of dislocating theory from practice as they are illustrated through fiction. The case study carried out here concerns an exemplary novel, Ninety Eighty-Four by George Orwell, observing how the literary discourse can display a confrontation between two linguistic models, each resulted from a different theory: “instrumentalism” (Winston Smith) and “determinism” (O’ Brien). Also, the possibility of identifying an Orwellian model as opposed to the Sapir-Whorf and the linguistic models deserves examination. Newspeak is full of problematic aspects: ideology shapes the language by means of “wooden language” (la langue de bois, in Françoise Thom’s terms). Therefore, the historical “regime of relevance” (Galin Tihanov) makes possible a peculiar (use of) theory: an instrument that translates the ideology becomes the very essence of the determinist theory on the language in a totalitarian state. In discussing the practical consequences of literary theory, Stanley Fish points out that they are inexistent, because theory can never be united with practice, as it is actually impossible to separate theory from practice – a similar observation made by Steven Knapp and Walter B. Michaels. Whether consequences are real poses a challenge: following Edward Said’s argument, Steven Mailloux observes that theory can be consequential by rhetorical means: theory does what all discursive practices do and that is that it attempts to persuade its readers (or population in a totalitarian state) to adopt its point of view, its way of seeing texts and the world.

La entropía informacional y los agentes morales. Una lectura de 1984 de George Orwell desde la Ética de la información de Luciano Floridi

Este artículo consiste en una interpretación de la novela 1984 de George Orwell desde los conceptos de la Ética de la información de Luciano Floridi, quien argumenta a favor del rol del agente moral en relación a su contribución al crecimiento y fortalecimiento del entorno informacional de la Infosfera, pero, además, reconoce que cualquier acción que afecte negativamente a la Infosfera en su conjunto puede incrementar el nivel de entropía. Según nuestra investigación, en el ecosistema informacional de la sociedad de Oceanía en 1984, el rol del agente moral es relevante, debido a que una actitud responsable y cuidadosa sobre cómo utilizar los objetos informacionales (el diario de Winston, los libros, los archivos, la telepantalla, la Neolengua, el hablaescribe, etc.), provocará la prosperidad del entorno informacional y, por lo tanto, no causará la entropía (la destrucción o la corrupción de dichas entidades informacionales). No obstante, como se aprecia en 1984, los objetos informacionales mencionados son sometidos a mecanismos de manipulación que incrementan la entropía, con el único fin de controlar la forma de actuar de las personas.