Unit:
Department of English Language and LiteratureLibrary of the School of Philosophy
Author:
Tsekeri Panagiota
Dissertation committee:
Νικόλαος Παναγόπουλος, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, ΕΚΠΑ
Γρηγόριος Ανανιάδης, Τέως Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Ιστορίας, Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο
Paolo Caponi, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature, Culture e Mediazioni, Università degli Studi di Milano
Άννα Δεσποτοπούλου, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, ΕΚΠΑ
Ασημίνα Καραβαντά, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, ΕΚΠΑ
Έφη Γιαννοπούλου, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Α.Π.Θ.
Αγγελική Σπυροπούλου, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Θεατρικών Σπουδών, Πανεπιστήμιο Πελοποννήσου
Original Title:
The Figure of the Enemy in George Orwell’s Work
Translated title:
The Figure of the Enemy in George Orwell’s Work
Summary:
The present thesis investigates the evolution of the figure of the Enemy in George
Orwell’s work, tracing a perceived shift from the crude reproduction of essentialist,
constitutive binaries in the colonial fiction, to the author’s ever more sophisticated and
nuanced treatment of the figure in his later work. My contention is that, as Orwell’s
notions of the enemy are sharpened and diffused, his ambiguous representation of the
figure suggests unsettling subterranean affinities between Friend and Enemy, Self and
Other, and ultimately, the existence of an insidious Enemy within which negates
Manichean schemata and dismantles the hegemonic discourse of Self and Enemy/Other
as an ideological artefact instrumental in constructing and disciplining social subjects.
The main theoretical framework employed is the decisionist political theory of Carl
Schmitt, especially his signature Friend/Enemy distinction as the originary political
phenomenon, and the sovereign decision on the enemy as indispensable for the radical
constitution of the political community and the homogenous Self. Embarking from the
analysis of the figure of the Enemy as always-already Other in “A Hanging” (1931),
Burmese Days (1934), and “Shooting an Elephant” (1936), it is argued that in Homage
to Catalonia (1938) Orwell blurs the traditional contour of the hegemonically
designated Enemy and raises disquieting questions about the self-evident righteousness
of the Friend/Self. Animal Farm evinces that not all Enemies are Others, as in the
novella the identities of Friend and Enemy, Self and Other collide, suggesting they are
functionally reversible and politically inseparable and attesting to the inconsistency of
immutable and mutually exclusive identities. The process which the present dissertation
explores culminates in Nineteen Eighty-Four where the spectral presence and
representation of the ambiguous, fluid and self-contradictory Enemy and the
interminable interchangeability of friend and enemy subject-positions constitute the
means through which Orwell dismantles the hegemonic discourse of Friend/Self and
Enemy/Other as an ideological artefact. The protagonist’s defeat to himself in the final
battle which comes to symbolize the conclusion to his struggle for a subversive
subjectivity conflates Self and Enemy, revealing the latter as constitutively included in
the conception of the former. Shedding light on Orwell’s committed investigation of
the vexed question of subjectivity in his fiction, the Enemy and the Self emerge asiii
dynamic and problematic relations, rather than mutually exclusive, fixed identities,
suggesting a Subject that is relational and historical, rather than self-constituted and
immutable.
Main subject category:
Language – Literature
Keywords:
George Orwell, Carl Schmitt, Enemy/Other, sovereignity, state of exception, bare life
Number of references:
176
File:
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