Post-colonial Nation and and Cultural Hegemony in George Orwell's Animal
Farm A Rereading
Abstract
Animal Farm by George Orwell is an English literary classic. The
novel is taught and read in most English departments worldwide to
introduce beginners to English literature. It has been widely read and
researched as an allegorical satire, focusing chiefly on communist
Russia. Specifically, this 1945 novel is an excellent referent for any
state-level abuse of power. Researchers also read the novel’
representations of the dominants’ corruption and the marginal’s misery
from a post-colonial perspective. The present paper builds on the
post-colonial research tradition. However, it turns the interpretative
screw a little, employing a cultural lens. The paper reads the novel as
an allegory of a post-colonial nation that dismantles the imperial
powers but becomes destabilised under the sway of cultural hegemony. It
divides animal time through the colonial/post-colonial binary. It
explores how the colonial time enforces cultural authenticity and why
post-colonial times dislocate it. The paper situates the study within
colonialism, nation and cultural hegemony framework. In this way, the
article uncovers various power axes in society and contends that the
post-national period becomes unstable when various forms of cultural
hegemony render people from transcultural to ambivalent.