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Visions of a Future War 1900-1918, or the Origins of George Orwell’s 1984

Summary/Abstract: The article summarizes the visions of a future war found in popular prose and scientific works from the years 1870–1918. Most of these texts anticipated a destructive war, leading to the collapse of nations and civilization, albeit only a momentary one. The article focuses on visions of a lasting war, or even a war without end, leading to the militarization of all aspects of individual and collective life. After the First World War, Karl Schmidt and Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jan Patočka all sketched out images of wars or military organizations (barracks, camp) that would enslave everyone, without exception, and have a pernicious effect on all areas of life, eliminating the private sphere and subordinating nations to the heartless calculations of biopower. A well-known literary text on this subject is George Orwell’s 1984, but the image of an endless war has earlier sources, which are presented in the article, and which seem to confirm that the vision of biopower and an eternal state of emergency is the cultural heritage of the First World War.

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