Defamiliarization or ''ostranenie'' ( rus, остранение, p=ɐstrɐˈnʲenʲɪjə) is the
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
istic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so they could gain new perspectives and see the world differently. According to the
Russian formalists who coined the term, it is the central concept of art and poetry. The concept has influenced
20th-century art and theory, ranging over movements including
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
,
postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
,
epic theatre
Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creati ...
,
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
, and philosophy; additionally, it is used as a tactic by recent movements such as
culture jamming
Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication) is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It atte ...
.
Coinage
The term "defamiliarization" was first coined in 1917 by Russian formalist
Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures ass ...
in his essay "Art as Device" (alternate translation: "Art as Technique").
Shklovsky invented the term as a means to "distinguish poetic from practical language on the basis of the former's perceptibility." Essentially, he is stating that
poetic language is fundamentally different than the language that we use every day because it is more difficult to understand: "Poetic speech is ''formed speech''.
Prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
is ordinary speech – economical, easy, proper, the goddess of prose
'dea prosae''is a goddess of the accurate, facile type, of the "direct" expression of a child."
This difference is the key to the creation of art and the prevention of "over-automatization," which causes an individual to "function as though by formula."
This distinction between artistic language and everyday language, for Shklovsky, applies to all artistic forms:
The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
Thus, defamiliarization serves as a means to force individuals to recognize artistic language:
In studying poetic speech in its phonetic and lexical
Lexical may refer to:
Linguistics
* Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language
* Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification
* Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge
* Lex ...
structure as well as in its characteristic distribution of words and in the characteristic thought structures compounded from the words, we find everywhere the artistic trademark – that is, we find material obviously created to remove the automatism of perception; the author's purpose is to create the vision which results from that deautomatized perception. A work is created "artistically" so that its perception is impeded and the greatest possible effect is produced through the slowness of the perception.
This technique is meant to be especially useful in distinguishing poetry from prose, for, as
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
said, "poetic language must appear strange and wonderful."
As writer
Anaïs Nin discussed in her 1968 book ''
The Novel of the Future
''The Novel of the Future'' is a non-fiction book by Anaïs Nin, published in 1968.Anaïs Nin (1968). ''The Novel of the Future''. New York: Macmillan. In it she explores the nature of the creative process in relation to novel-writing, including c ...
'':
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, ''we see a new meaning in it''.
According to literary theorist
Uri Margolin Uri may refer to:
Places
* Canton of Uri, a canton in Switzerland
* Úri, a village and commune in Hungary
* Uri, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province
* Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, a town in India
* Uri (island), an island off Malakula Island ...
:
Defamiliarization of that which is or has become familiar or taken for granted, hence automatically perceived, is the basic function of all devices. And with defamiliarization come both the slowing down and the increased difficulty (impeding) of the process of reading and comprehending and an awareness of the artistic procedures (devices) causing them.
Usage
In Romantic poetry
The technique appears in English Romantic poetry, particularly in the poetry of
Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's '' ...
, and was defined in the following way by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...
, in his ''
Biographia Literaria
The ''Biographia Literaria'' is a critical autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1817 in two volumes. Its working title was 'Autobiographia Literaria'. The formative influences on the work were Wordsworth's theory of poetry, th ...
'': "To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar ... this is the character and privilege of genius."
In Russian literature
To illustrate what he means by defamiliarization, Shklovsky uses examples from
Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
, whom he cites as using the technique throughout his works: "The narrator of '
Kholstomer
"Kholstomer" ( rus, Холстомер, p=xəlstɐˈmʲer), also translated as "Strider", is a work by Leo Tolstoy that has been referred to as “one of the most striking stories in Russian literature”. It was started in 1863 and left unfinis ...
,' for example, is a horse, and it is the horse's point of view (rather than a person's) that makes the content of the story seem unfamiliar." As a Russian Formalist, many of Shklovsky's examples use Russian authors and Russian dialects: "And currently
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
is changing his diction from the old literary language to the new literary colloquialism of
Leskov. Ordinary speech and literary language have thereby changed places (see the work of
Vyacheslav Ivanov and many others)."
Defamiliarization also includes the use of foreign languages within a work. At the time that Shklovsky was writing, there was a change in the use of language in both
literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
and everyday spoken Russian. As Shklovsky puts it: "Russian literary language, which was originally foreign to
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
, has so permeated the language of the people that it has blended with their conversation. On the other hand, literature has now begun to show a tendency towards the use of dialects and/or barbarisms."
Narrative plots can also be defamiliarized. The Russian formalists distinguished between the
fabula or basic story stuff of a narrative and the
syuzhet
In narratology, fabula ( rus, фабула, p=ˈfabʊlə) equates to the thematic content of a narrative and syuzhet ( rus, сюжет, p=sʲʊˈʐɛt, a=Ru-сюжет.ogg) equates to the chronological structure of the events within the narrative. ...
or the formation of the story stuff into a concrete
plot
Plot or Plotting may refer to:
Art, media and entertainment
* Plot (narrative), the story of a piece of fiction
Music
* ''The Plot'' (album), a 1976 album by jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava
* The Plot (band), a band formed in 2003
Other
* ''Plot' ...
. For Shklovsky, the syuzhet is the fabula defamiliarized. Shklovsky cites
Lawrence Sterne
Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and ''A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', published ...
’s
Tristram Shandy Tristram may refer to:
Literature
* the title character of ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'', a novel by Laurence Sterne
* the title character of ''Tristram of Lyonesse'', an epic poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
*"Tristra ...
as an example of a story that is defamiliarized by unfamiliar plotting. Sterne uses temporal displacements, digressions, and causal disruptions (e.g., placing the effects before their causes) to slow down the reader’s ability to reassemble the (familiar) story. As a result, the syuzhet “makes strange” the fabula.
Related concepts
Différance
Shklovsky's defamiliarization can also be compared to
Jacques Derrida's concept of
différance:
What Shklovskij wants to show is that the operation of defamiliarization and its consequent perception in the literary system is like the winding of a watch (the introduction of energy into a physical system): both "originate" difference, change, value, motion, presence. Considered against the general and functional background of Derridian différance, what Shklovsky calls "perception" can be considered a matrix for production of difference.
Since the term différance refers to the dual meanings of the
French word difference to mean both "to differ" and "to defer", defamiliarization draws attention to the use of common language in such a way as to alter one's perception of an easily understandable object or concept. The use of defamiliarization both differs and defers, since the use of the technique alters one's perception of a concept (to defer), and forces one to think about the concept in different, often more complex, terms (to differ).
Shklovskij's formulations negate or cancel out the existence/possibility of a "real" perception: variously, by (1) the familiar Formalist denial of a link between literature and life, connoting their status as non-communicating vessels, (2) always, as if compulsively, referring to a real experience in terms of empty, dead, and automatized repetition and recognition, and (3) implicitly locating real perception at an unspecifiable temporally anterior and spatially other place, at a mythic "first time" of naïve experience, the loss of which to automatization is to be restored by aesthetic perceptual fullness.
The Uncanny
The influence of Russian Formalism on twentieth-century art and culture is largely due to the literary technique of defamiliarization or 'making strange', and has also been linked to Freud's notion of the
uncanny
The uncanny is the psychological experience of something as not simply mysterious, but creepy, often in a strangely familiar way. It may describe incidents where a familiar thing or event is encountered in an unsettling, eerie, or taboo context. ...
. In ''Das Unheimliche'' ("The Uncanny"),
Freud states that "the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar," however, this is not a fear of the unknown, but more of a feeling about something being both strange and familiar. The connection between ''ostranenie'' and the uncanny can be seen where Freud muses on the technique of literary uncanniness: "It is true that the writer creates a kind of uncertainty in us in the beginning by not letting us know, no doubt purposely, whether he is taking us into the real world or into a purely fantastic one of his own creation." When "the writer pretends to move in the world of common reality," they can situate supernatural events, such as the animation of inanimate objects, in the quotidian, day-to-day reality of the modern world, defamiliarizing the reader and provoking an uncanny feeling.
The Estrangement effect
Defamiliarization has been associated with the poet and playwright
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
, whose
Verfremdungseffekt ("estrangement effect") was a potent element of his approach to theatre. In fact, as Willett points out, Verfremdungseffekt is "a translation of the Russian critic Viktor Shklovskij's phrase 'Priem Ostranenija', or 'device for making strange'".
Brecht, in turn, has been highly influential for artists and film-makers including
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...
and
Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental. .
Science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
critic
Simon Spiegel, who defines defamiliarization as "the formal-rhetorical act of making the familiar strange (in Shklovsky's sense)," distinguished it from Brecht's estrangement effect. To Spiegel, estrangement is the effect on the reader which can be caused by defamiliarization or through deliberate recontextualization of the familiar.
See also
*
Verfremdungseffekt
*
Problematization
Problematization is a process of stripping away common or conventional understandings of a subject matter in order to gain new insights.This method can be applied to a term, writing, opinion, ideology, identity, or person. Practioners consider t ...
*
Distancing effect
The distancing effect, also translated as alienation effect (german: Verfremdungseffekt or ''V-Effekt''), is a concept in performing arts credited to German playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Brecht first used the term in his essay "Alienation Effects in ...
*
Nacirema
References
Further reading
*
* Shklovskij, Viktor. "Art as Technique". Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed.
Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 1998.
* Basil Lvoff, "The Twists and Turns of Estrangement
* Min Tian, The Poetics of Difference and Displacement: Twentieth-Century Chinese-Western
Intercultural theatre, Intercultural Theatre. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008.
Ostranenie Magazine{{refend
Postmodern art
Literary theory
Artistic techniques
Metafictional techniques
de:Verfremdungseffekt
gl:Distancia estética