Orwell and Archives

Ivan Szekely of Blinken OSA Archivum delivered the ninth CRISP seminar titled 'Orwell and Archives' at Stirling University online, on February 19, 2025.

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four usually brings to mind the ubiquity of surveillance, dictatorial power in every aspect of life, Big Brother, "newspeak" and other terms that have entered mainstream English. Under the pretext of another, no less important, motif of the novel, the constant rewriting and reinterpretation of the past, this seminar aims to share with the participants some thoughts on memory institutions, especially archives.

This event is part of the surveillance extravaganza taking place at the University of Stirling in January and February 2025 and is scheduled to accompany the hosting of the Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth at the University of Stirling Library.

The Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy (CRISP) is a collaborative initiative between the University of Stirling’s Management School, The University of St Andrews, the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Sciences, and School of Law, the University of Essex and Coventry University's Centre for Business in Society. CRISP research focuses on the political, legal, economic, and social dimensions of the surveillance society.