Shaping Dystopian Visions in Orwell’s 1984 and Laredj’s 2084: The Tale of the Last Arab

Abstract

Speculative fiction has appeared deliberately. Its execution oscillates between fantasy, science fiction, or utopia/dystopia dyads, but its influence is hitherto salutary partly because it expands the horizons of culture, it is at the helm of traveling by probable roads and constantly worries itself about the future, partly also because it has the power to carry a literary work to universality with regards to the laws and lore of identity and aesthetics. The question organizing this project concerns the extent to which Orwell and Laredj were derivative from authors, works of literature, history, politics, and media to amplify the underrepresented voices in a totalitarian discourse. Thus, this research attempts to examine two pieces of literature that are more concerned with the future than any other. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Laredj’s 2084: The Tale of the Last Arab are analyzed and compared to highlight not only similarities and differences but also to regard the sci-fi genre from another angle that stands at the periphery in the presence of Western production. It finds that the powerful imagery of Orwell’s text still impacts literature that is concerned with the vision of the future. However, the comparison also reveals that Orwell and Laredj were not concerned with expressing adventures and exaggeration for entertainment as much as chronicling the future in a bitter disclosure to warn from totalitarianism and ideological domination. This research also invites readers and researchers to act and react to the turn of comparatists towards Cultural Studies, Woman’s Studies, Semiotics, Nationalism, and Postcolonial theory to deconstruct the Western hierarchy in comparative literature.