Power and Resistance in Animal Farm and Brave New World: A Foucauldian Reading

Abstract

This paper provides a comparative Foucauldian analysis of George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) to examine the enactment of power, its normalisation and its resistance in dystopian societies. It uses Michel Foucault's ideas of disciplinary power, biopower, governmentality, panopticism, power/knowledge and subjectification to suggest that the novels are less about power as a form of repression from above and more about the 'productive and diffuse force of power' whic influences behaviour, bodies, desires, identities, accepted truths. Propaganda, surveillance, fear, historical revision, linguistic manipulation, and unequal control of resources are all ways to consolidate power in Animal Farm. The changes to the Seven Commandments and the way Squealer has twisted the truth to suit the ruling elite show how the ruling elite is able to control memory, suppress critical thinking and legitimize domination. In contrast, Brave New World represents a fairly sophisticated biopolitical regime where genetic engineering, caste predestination, hypnopaedic conditioning, consumerism, sexual control, and soma produce citizens who freely embrace their assigned role. What is evident from the comparison is that Orwell focuses on the use of coercive discipline, scarcity, and ideological control, while Huxley focuses on more subtle forms of control through pleasure, conditioning, and the manipulation of desire. The paper also explores the resistance which is weakly present, such as that of the farm animals, as well as that of the man who does not care for Professor Marx, Helmholtz Watson and John the Savage, and illustrates how opposition is difficult when words and thoughts are defined and controlled by power. The study can be concluded that both novels are at the heart of current discussion on surveillance, misinformation, biotechnology, consumer culture and behavioural manipulation; it is shown that power works best when domination is internal and made to seem essential for stability, happiness, or for the good of the collective.