Post-colonial Nation and Cultural Hegemony in George Orwell’sAnimal Farm : A Rereading
Umme Salma*
Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic
University Chittagong, Bangladesh,
ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1545-2785
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/dr-umme-salma-44a62649
Corresponding author: 4/8 Augustus
Street, Toowong, Queensland-4066, Australia. Email:
*u.salma@uq.edu.au
Post-colonial Nation and Cultural Hegemony in George Orwell’sAnimal Farm: A Rereading
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.
Keywords: Orwell; rereading; post-colonial nation; cultural hegemony;
cultural dislocation; transculturation
Subject classification codes: post-colonial reading