1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[jbor]

>> So, this is the question or aporia posed. In a situation where "dissidence"
>> is useless, how does one actually go about opposing or changing a
>> totalitarian regime like Hitler's or Stalin's or Saddam's Iraq - from within
>> or from outside - without resorting to the same sort of tactics which that
>> regime uses? Which is more "moral", to leave a cruel and inhuman regime be
>> or to take up arms to defeat it? I'm not sure that either Orwell or Pynchon
>> has an adequate answer to that question.
 
on 5/5/03 4:04 AM, Terrance wrote:

> Does Pynchon answer this question at all? Adequately or inadequately?

Orwell certainly doesn't in _1984_. The narrative ends with Winston
succumbing, but then we jump to the Appendix where B.B. and Newspeak are in
the past, as Pynchon correctly identifies. There's no hint of how or when
the regime was overcome, however.

In the Foreword Pynchon seems to offer up the "dissident Left" as a solution
of sorts, except it isn't really. What Orwell's novel shows is that power
corrupts, absolutely power absolutely, as the saying goes, and that the
Socialist Revolution devolves (seemingly inevitably) into soulless
totalitarianism. The idea of a "dissident government" is oxymoronic, and I
posed the question to Otto a couple of times whether Pynchon is in fact
anti-government. If he is, he's trying to yoke Orwell into that camp too,
but that's inaccurate. Orwell was pro-democracy. Socialist democracy.

best