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Orwell, Politics, and Power
Preface This is a book about George Orwell’s political thought it is not another book about George Orwell. I take the distinctive political writings within Orwell’s literary corpus as a source of inspiration for theorizing about contemporary political issues and themes. I have not attempted to o? er yet another biography of Orwell nor is this yet another literary critique of Orwell’s writings or an evaluation of his prose re?ections upon the political and social conditions of his day. These works, needless to say, have already been written. What follows di?ers from the multitude of previous studies of Orwell by taking him seriously as a political thinker and deriving a “political message” (of sorts) from his works that quali? es (or so it is argued) as a timeless contribution to the political thought of the liberal tradition. My inclination as a political theorist is to take what is perhaps Orwell’s ?nest novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, as a source of puzzlement and consternation....