Abstract
The present paper explores the crisis of the modern democratic state based on Althusser’s concept of the Ideological State Apparatuses and Chomsky’s investigation into the suspicious role of the media. Orwell’s novel Animal Farm was examined by way of casting the light on the junctures of intersection between history and culture. Re-reading the novel through the perspective of Althusser's ISA and Chomsky’s experienced lens help understand the way of the modern world where the various media means drive the masses into the end determined by the ruling business groups.
Highlights
Falling back upon Marx' definition of the state as a "force of repressive execution and intervention 'in the interests of the ruling class'" (137), Althusser differentiates between two types of State Apparatuses: the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) and the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)
In his book Media Control, Chomsky gives an alternative definition to the modern democratic state where "the public must be barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled" (2)
Chomsky refers to the Leninist conception of the state propaganda leading to the monopoly of power by a minority, a situation that a reader might find enacted in Animal Farm: A vanguard of revolutionary intellectuals take state power, using popular revolutions as the force that brings them to state power, and drive the stupid masses toward a future that they are too dumb and incompetent to envision for themselves. (Media 9)
Summary
Volume 9 No 2 April 2018 with such a relationship reproduced. Written after the World War II (1945), the story explores the terror tactics of totalitarian regimes which depend heavily on the ideological orientation of the people's consciousness. Working in BBC in 1941 and later as a war correspondent for The Observer in France and Germany exposed Orwell to the suspicious role the press plays in mobilizing the public consciousness in accordance with the dominant political tendencies This gives him a deep insight into the hypocrisies of the democratic states along with the intellectuals, business groups, and ideological institutions that serve them. The Ministry of Truth that rewrites history according to the Big Brother's will in Nineteen-EightyFour is but an example of the various educational, religious, and cultural instruments enhancing the ruler's grasp over the helpless people It is Animal Farm, that encompasses obvious examples of Althusser's ISAs which serve the same hegemonic goal of the ruling class regardless of the sort of the regime. It was replaced by another anthem that glorifies the leader soon after the pigs' overtake of power harbors at the safe side
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