Poem, Creed, Letter, Foetus: George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying

A Lacanian reading of George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying underscores the mordant vision of this 1936 novel, explicating the impact on consciousness, gender, and sexuality of multiple sign systems under capitalism, the failure of poetry to reinvigorate the signifier, and Orwell's critique of the ideological interpellation of the subject.