ABSTRACT
In a famous passage from 1984, Winston reluctantly throws away a photograph contradicting the state’s formation of its own history. The act is horrifying in its depiction of a totalitarian regime, but comforting on a larger scale. The photo is presented before it is destroyed. Its status as a guarantor of historical truth remains untouched by its physical destruction. The photo also reminds us of the historicity of the totalitarian state itself, that its very anxiety to recreate its past testifies to its vulnerability. What is often overlooked here is the parallel between the two products of mechanical production: the photo and the newspaper article Winston is revising. In a kind of analogous doublethink, we trust a historical artifact even as the text insists upon the instability of all such evidence.
