Desedimentation of Routine: Post-Crisis Invention of Tradition in George Orwell’s Animal Farm

Abstract

Desedimentation is a concept that every society in all historical periods experiences. It refers to the socio-political condition in which the routinization of norms is broken due to specific crises. Crises render familiar traditions into unhomed, disturbing unstable issues, giving birth to desedimentation. However, it is a social and historical necessity to oblige people to reconsider their identity. In this regard, some thinkers claim that desedimentation results in three primary factors: the disruption of socio-political routine, the struggle for hegemony, and the undecidability of calculations. Nevertheless, this claim suffers from deficiency. The lack lies in the failure to propose a comprehensive definition and outcomes of this concept. It limits the conclusions to the immediate historical context without considering the unchangeable part of history, or as Lacan would put it, the Real of history. As an alternative, this paper proposes the four most probable defining features and outcomes of desedimentation regarding the broader scope of historical development. They are historical error, historical necessity, the invention of a new routinization system, and subjection. The paper seeks to apply these four potentials in the well-known Animal Farm. This novel represents the desedimentation process that any society may undergo. After the revolution's success, the animals strive to find an alternative system and ideology to the previous one, going through the above-mentioned potentials of crisis and desedimentation.