Sulla Legittimazione dell'Assurdo: i Governi e gli Atti Rivoluzionari in "Noi" e "1984"

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “We” and George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” are pivotal literary works, multifaceted, visionary novels that represent, at the same time, the product of remarkable literary creativity and the result of astounding political consciousness. For more than half a century, “We” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four” have been analysed, both individually and comparatively, from different perspectives – literarily, sociologically, and politically. However, despite the popularity of these two dystopian novels and the extensive research that has been conducted on them over the last few decades, there has been no detailed inquiry on the legitimacy (or lack of thereof) of the political bodies and revolutionary acts therein represented. In this study I propose a thought experiment that aims at investigating the political “absurd” in “We” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, exploring the possible justification and legitimation of Edinoe Gosudarstvo’s and Oceania’s governments, on the one hand, and that of D-503’s and Winston Smith’s revolutionary acts, on the other. To this end, my discussion is articulated into two parts: the first part focusses on the conceivable basis of the political legitimacy of Edinoe Gosudarstvo and Oceania, specifically through a consideration of theories derived from the political contractarian tradition; the second part is dedicated to the exploration of the legitimising grounds of D-503’s and Winston Smith’s revolutionary acts, particularly in relation to the development of the two protagonists’ individuality and to the collective “revolutionary” agency that originates from D-503’s and Winston Smith’s interaction with the individuality of the "Other". At the end of this thought experiment, it will be seen how the political "absurd" in both “We” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four” finds a certain degree of legitimation – a fact that confers an interesting new dimension and depth to the two novels.