Animal Farm Reassembled: Actor-Network Theory and the Construction of Power in Orwell's Novella

Abstract

This paper reinterprets George Orwell's Animal Farm through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), moving beyond traditional allegorical readings that reduce the novella to a closed system of historical correspondences. While conventional criticism has mapped characters onto figures from the Russian Revolution, such approaches privilege human intention and symbolic representation while neglecting the role of non-human actants. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law, this analysis reconceptualises the farm as a dynamic network in which power emerges from the alignment and translation of heterogeneous entities—animals, texts, tools, and environmental forces. The rebellion is examined as a moment of network reassembly; the windmill as a material actant that reorganises labour; the Seven Commandments as an immutable mobile that sustains ideological control; and Squealer as a translation mechanism that stabilises authority. The paper argues that the pigs' dominance is not simply a matter of individual ambition or ideological betrayal but the outcome of their capacity to enrol and align diverse actants. By foregrounding materiality and relationality, this study offers a genuinely novel mode of interpretation that expands the critical possibilities of Orwell's text and contributes to post-anthropocentric methodologies in literary studies.