This essay will be an analysis piece on Animal Farm (1945) written by George Orwell (1903 - 1950) through the application of Michael Foucault’s (1926 - 1984) theory of politics of truth (1997) and the idea of Panopticon (1975). By viewing through Foucault’s theories, it will help decipher the intertextuality and the multiple layers of meaning within Orwell’s piece.
Animal Farm tells a story of a group of farm animals rebelling against the human beings under the leadership of two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. After being inspired the prize winning boar, Old Major’s speech about a better future by eliminating humans out of the whole picture, they found the opportunity one night to take over the farm and renamed it from Manor Farm to Animal Farm. The pigs laid out seven commandments which they named it as Animalism for all the farm animals to follow which Napoleon eventually change them to support his own agenda. The farm animals …show more content…
In one of the earlier works of Foucault, he allocated power in institutions rather than in the individuals that run those institutions which he then sees power being ‘dispersed’ and ‘pervasive’ (Felluga, 2002; Gaventa, 2003). Foucault’s idea of ‘discourse’ draws similar parallels with Louis Althusser’s (1918 - 1990) idea of ‘problematic’ which both identify themselves as an ‘organizing bodies of knowledge, with rules and regulations’ (Storey, 2009: 128). However, Althusser and Foucault come in contrast in their humanitarian views. Althusser believes in a ‘totalizing view of human nature’ that makes man a constant subject of an ‘ideological construct’ but Foucault locates the ‘modes of objectification’ that turns men into subjects (Daldal, 2014: 161). After establishing an overview of Foucault’s concepts, the essay will proceed to the main analysis of Animal Farm through the lens of
Animal Farm tells a story of a group of farm animals rebelling against the human beings under the leadership of two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. After being inspired the prize winning boar, Old Major’s speech about a better future by eliminating humans out of the whole picture, they found the opportunity one night to take over the farm and renamed it from Manor Farm to Animal Farm. The pigs laid out seven commandments which they named it as Animalism for all the farm animals to follow which Napoleon eventually change them to support his own agenda. The farm animals …show more content…
In one of the earlier works of Foucault, he allocated power in institutions rather than in the individuals that run those institutions which he then sees power being ‘dispersed’ and ‘pervasive’ (Felluga, 2002; Gaventa, 2003). Foucault’s idea of ‘discourse’ draws similar parallels with Louis Althusser’s (1918 - 1990) idea of ‘problematic’ which both identify themselves as an ‘organizing bodies of knowledge, with rules and regulations’ (Storey, 2009: 128). However, Althusser and Foucault come in contrast in their humanitarian views. Althusser believes in a ‘totalizing view of human nature’ that makes man a constant subject of an ‘ideological construct’ but Foucault locates the ‘modes of objectification’ that turns men into subjects (Daldal, 2014: 161). After establishing an overview of Foucault’s concepts, the essay will proceed to the main analysis of Animal Farm through the lens of