Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm

Ayman Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb; Abdul Serdar Öztürk

Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm

Abstract

The Literary censorship of literature has long served as a political and ideological instrument of oppression, reducing opposition and consolidating dominant narratives. Even though the phenomenon of banning a novel in the twentieth century is not new, this paper discusses George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) to analyze why the novel was banned in certain political situations and why its banning is not only linked to the danger of literature but also to the insecurity of a certain ideology. This paper is based on New Historicism theory, using the writings of Stephen Greenblatt and Michel Foucault to show how literature constructs and is constructed by the structures of power, seen in the works of Animal Farm, as situated in the Cold War and totalitarianism context. The paper presents a deconstructive reading of the text based on the concepts of binary opposition and aporia as proposed by Jacques Derrida. The article shows that Orwell's text shows the authoritarian discourse unstable by revealing contradictions in the language of revolution itself. The paper suggests that censorship does not work due to the instability of meaning; it is historically contingent and linguistically volatile. Ultimately, the banning of Animal Farm reveals not the power of the censor but the anxiety of ideological systems confronted with their own fragility.

Keywords

References

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

British and Irish Language, Literature and Culture

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Ayman Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb ^*
0000-0002-7426-2666
Türkiye

Abdul Serdar Öztürk
0000-0002-7780-7107
Türkiye

Early Pub Date

May 2, 2026

Publication Date

June 30, 2026

Submission Date

February 20, 2026

Acceptance Date

April 4, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 8 Number: 1

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX

Cite

RIS / Bibtex

APA

Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb, A., & Öztürk, A. S. (2026). Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Eurasian Journal of English Language and Literature, 8(1), 63-78. https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX

AMA

1.Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb A, Öztürk AS. Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. EJELL. 2026;8(1):63-78. https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX

Chicago

Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb, Ayman, and Abdul Serdar Öztürk. 2026. “Censorship As Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm”. Eurasian Journal of English Language and Literature 8 (1): 63-78. https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX.

EndNote

Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb A, Öztürk AS (June 1, 2026) Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Eurasian Journal of English Language and Literature 8 1 63–78.

IEEE

[1]A. Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb and A. S. Öztürk, “Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm”, EJELL, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 63–78, June 2026, [Online]. Available: https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX

ISNAD

Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb, Ayman - Öztürk, Abdul Serdar. “Censorship As Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm”. Eurasian Journal of English Language and Literature 8/1 (June 1, 2026): 63-78. https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX.

JAMA

1.Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb A, Öztürk AS. Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. EJELL. 2026;8:63–78.

MLA

Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb, Ayman, and Abdul Serdar Öztürk. “Censorship As Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm”. Eurasian Journal of English Language and Literature, vol. 8, no. 1, June 2026, pp. 63-78, https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX.

Vancouver

1.Ayman Dawood Najim Sallawy Alhalb, Abdul Serdar Öztürk. Censorship as Ideological Anxiety: A New Historicist and Deconstructive Reading of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. EJELL [Internet]. 2026 Jun. 1;8(1):63-78. Available from: https://izlik.org/JA25EB27HX