“A Humanitarian is Always a Hypocrite”: George Orwell, Englishness, and Empires

AbstractGeorge Orwell was a paradigmatically English author whose work was shaped by a variety of other literatures and histories, and whose texts achieved a worldwide audience. His work insistently locates England within global systems, in particular an international capitalism structured by imperialism, exposing the fluidity of English identity. This critical method, with its movement between the local and global, parallels the structure of politics; political practice is always specific, but can be understood in terms of abstract categories. The chapter argues that it has been possible to use Orwell's work in multiple places and struggles in part because of its movement between general and particular. His Englishness facilitates rather than restricts his international circulation. It argues that Orwell's work and its reception suggest that world literature is not a descriptive term designating texts that avoid marks of their origin but a project that explores relations and exchanges between situated works.