Metapropaganda

This article engages with recent theoretical work which has developed the notion of texts offering models of reading for their readers. More specifically, it looks at ways in which science-fiction texts position readers, and at the ways in which political texts comment on their own reading processes and propagandizing strategies. A comparative analysis of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Katharine Burdekin’s neglected feminist dystopia Swastika Night (1937) focuses on a textual device common to both. The reading process of subjects in dystopia is explored: both Winston Smith and Burdekin’s Alfred are presented reading political texts, secret books. Swastika Night and Nineteen Eighty-Four are political texts intended to influence readers, embedded in which are scenes where political texts influence readers. The article discusses the significance of these scenes, which are both self-referential and extra- textual It identifies and explores some of the problems of the parallel activities of the reader in the text and that outside the text—you, me. It concludes by arguing for an auto-critical impulse in dystopia, which is also a source of narrative—even propagan-dizing—energy. (GM)

Art · Dystopia · Literature · Political science · Reading (process) · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Law · Themes in Literature Analysis · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction