Ethics and Memory
Concepts
public sphere
archive
memory
double-think
truth (right and wrong)
construction
irony
identity
continuity
1984
“1984” presents a dystopic future, however, the the text focuses on the dystopic nature of the structures of language more than the structures of production, the public sphere, or engagement. That is, most of the text examines what it means to be on the inside of the state's controlling structures. We know this is a text about language. The main character works with words. One of the four state ministries is the ministry of Truth, which is our entryway into the world of the novel. However, the introduction to this world is so specific, that the text leaves little space for other parts of the world, existence outside of participating in linguistic manipulations, as Winston, O'Brien, and Syme do. All of the figures presented participate in the state structure; therefore, it is difficult to understand who the production and proliferation of “information” is for. There are the Party members and the Proles. We know the Proles aren't human, so the social life they have is not the intended audience of the Ministry of Truth.
Another point to the primacy of language in the novel is the leveling of distinction between the ruling political movement, which is Ingsoc, to the language that this party is creating, Newspeak (54). The goal of the party is to control behavior and this is represented primarily through control of thinking: “Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller” (54). Who's behavior is being controlled? Does the control really exist on the level of just the party members who are already involved in the 'rectification' of language? The following quote would support the assertion that language control and, subsequently, thought control, is necessary if just for the party members themselves: “The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams. Syme, too—in some more complex way, involving double-think—Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of memory?” (1984 60) Both the intellectual Syme and the unintelligent Parsons participate in the manipulation of the linguistic culture at the same time they completely surrender to the pretense of the manipulation, that is, both performing double-think.
The manipulation of information through data takes a center stage given that controlling the present by manipulating the past is the main character's vocation. This speaks to the controlling of the archive. This is precisely the kind of manipulation of an archive, the loss of societal memory that political satire television shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report call out when a media outlet misrepresents facts in order to make their point. The Fox News organization participates in this. Perhaps this is why the term for controlling language is Newspeak, which could be heard as “News speak”. Was this type of manipulation of information by the news media a concern that Orwell faced in the 1940's? Is he performing a critique of the news establishment of the time, or is this critique simply prescient in describing the current phenomenon?
The main character expresses the concern that the ability to double-think makes inoperable the possession of memory. Memory becomes important for several reasons in the text: first, because the state goes through so much effort to control the archive. The novel's description of the structures mean to control the archive demand a significant suspension of disbelief. How are so many recalls made on every type of publication? Why is a recall even the best option? Why not simply demand that all information products be destroyed after a period? Otherwise, with the proliferation of contradictory records (Let's agree that it is impossible to recall and reprint all newspapers, pamphlets, books, etc.) what is the value of Winston's position? Who even cares to read an old newspaper? How would this newspaper be accessible to the general public after it has been rectified? No, structurally, the way that Winston's vocation has been represented is not workable. Therefore, the whole point of describing his work is describing the control that state places over the archive. The question of controlling an archive and controlling language is a postcolonial concern, much like some of the arguments made in Kincaid's “A Small Place.” The British state is, perhaps, then, notorious when it comes to controlling through language. Syme goes into great detail about how language, especially through its reduction, creates conditions for control.
The control of the archive is presented as control of memory: “But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one” (35). “If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death” (35). There is in the text a significant conflict with personal memory and imposed state memory (the archive): “He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness...” (35). Winston possesses his own memories, but these memories contradict the official politically imposed state position, making the personal memory a through crime and subject to the handling by the thought police. In these conditions, memory is subjected to state controls.
In a text by Edmundo Desnoes, "Memories of Underdevelopment," the question isn't whether the state forces one to forget. Rather, the issue is that some people don't remember. Can't remember. Desnoes spends a great deal of time in his novel working out the possibility that some types of people do not possess memory the same as others. They can't remember from one day to the next, which is the very issue that Winston takes issue with when both Syme and Parsons effectively perform ignorance of the fact that chocolate rations were higher one week before, yet they are being told that the current rationing is an increase from previous amounts. The question of memory in these two texts can be related to critiques of communist states: in one case post Cuban revolution and in the second case post Russian revolution.
With regards to the human ability to remember, Nietzsche sees this as the goal nature has set for itself in creating the human race. The ability to make and keep promises, to perform with integrity, to keep one's word, first to herself and, then, to others. These texts politicize awareness, consciousness, knowing what happened yesterday or six months ago. What practices are involved in exercising consciousness? Archives, writing, language. How are these things politicized in this text? How is awareness a moral obligation? Awareness begins to take on moral implications for Winston. He is unable to question the motives and actions of the state because he has no tools for memory. He only knows the poor conditions of his current existence and the only public account for the situation is that things are better today than before. “And though, of course, it grew worse as one's body aged, was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?” (61).
So, the text presents the conditions that it is simple, plausible, easy, natural for humans to adjust their understanding in order to explain their current conditions rather than remember or hold to what they previously believed. Believing what is easiest to believe. Just as this text calls into question the morality of reduced consciousness, Descartes also questions the morality of limited perspective and awareness. Both texts present social experiments, playful presentations of social structures. They are forms of play. The goal of play. What is the goal of play? Regardless of the goal, it is irony makes these texts a form of play. The reader is called on to accept that Winston's job is not real. The readers is supposed to question the validity of his job. Hmm. I feel like I am pushing this too much. I like the idea of play, but not of irony yet.
From Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality
"To breed an animal which is able to make promises—is that not precisely the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind?" (Nietzsche 38)
"In order to have that degree of control over the future, man must first have learnt to distinguish between what happens by accident and what by design, to think casually, to view the future as the present and anticipate it, to grasp with certainty what is end and what is means, in all, to be able to calculate, compute—and before he can do this, man himself will really have to become reliable, regular, automatic [notwendig], even in his own self-image, so that he, as someone making a promise is, is answerable for his own future!" (Nietzsche 39)
"That particular task of breeding an animal which has the right to make a promise includes, as we have already understood, as precondition and preparation, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain degree undeviating [notwendig], uniform, a peer amongst peers, orderly and consequently predictable. The immense amount of labour involved in what I have called the 'morality of custom'…" (Nietzsche 39)
"Let us place ourselves, on the other hand, at the end of this immense process where the tree actually bears fruit, where society and its morality of custom finally reveal what they were simply the means to: we then find the sovereign individualas the ripest fruit on its tree, like only to itself, having freed itself from the morality of custom, an autonomous, supra-ethical individual (because 'autonomous' and 'ethical' are mutually exclusive), in short, we find a man with his own, independent, durable will, who has the right to make a promise—and has a proud consciousness in every muscle of what he has finally achieved and incorporated, an actual awareness of power and freedom, a feeling that man in general has reached completion." (Nietzsche 40)
"The 'free' man, the possessor of a durable, unbreakable will, thus has his own standard of value: in possession of such a will: viewing others from his own standpoint, he respects or despises; and just as he will necessarily respect his peers, the strong and the reliable (those with the right to give their word), —that is everyone who makes promises like a sovereign, ponderously, seldom, slowly, and is sparing with his trust, who confers an honor when he places his trust, who gives his word as something which can be relied on, because he is strong enough to remain upright in the face of mishap or even 'in the face of fate'." (Nietzsche 40)
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