“Estraingement”, or the Twists and Turns of Defamiliarization

Essay by Vasily Lvov

Defamiliarization, estrangement, or ostranenie (in Russian, the term stems
from the word “stranny”, strange1) has always existed in art, but Viktor Shklovsky
was the first one to define and name it in his 1914 brochure “The Resurrection of
the Word”. Shklovsky later elaborated the early definition in the famous article
“Art as Technique”2 written in 1917.
Ostranenie (defamiliarization, estrangement) remains faithful to itself and,
thus, avoids a stiffed interpretation. It had scarcely appeared when it set off for a
strange journey. To explain, I will need to turn to Russian language here.
At first the term of Shklovsky was printed with a mistake, one letter “n” in
the word “ostrannenie” got lost, and since then the term has even more likely been
taken for an error. Another landmark in its history is connected with Bertolt Brecht
who borrowed this term from Shklovsky for his epic theatre theory. Brecht
translated it into German as “die Verfremdung”, which in its turn was rendered
into Russian as “otchuzhdenie” (stemming from “chuzhoy”, different, unfamiliar,
strange), or “alienation”, – a term used in Marxism and appealing to a completely
different philosophical teaching. Several transformations of the word followed to
get rid of this disambiguation, but suddenly Shklovsky’s “Stories about Prose”
appeared with a new term - “otstranenie”. This misprint was an unintentional
crossing of two words: “ostranenie” and “otzhuzhdenie”.
Some scholars, as a modern Russian philosopher Grigory Tulchinsky for
example, believe that this confusion has been to no good and that there is no sense
in comparing the many variations of the same term with each other. However,
there is a subtle verge between “o-stranenie” and “ot-stranie”, which is perhaps
thinner that the letter “t” that separates them, but still important, like when we
distinguish metonymy from synecdoche.

1
Though outwardly similar, these words have different etymology.
2
“Art as Device” in other translations
 Yet in English there is no problem with it. O-stranenie is translated as
defamiliarization or estrangement, while ot-stranenie, which is used in Russian to
designate “Verfremdung”, is the same thing as the distancing or alienation effect.
However, one should always remember that Shklovsky’s “ostranenie”, as
originally described, possessed the two meanings.
As for defamiliarization and estrangement, both terms are felicitous; they
cannot exclude each other since the first one emphasizes unfamiliarity and the
second concentrates on strangeness. In this article, we will use them as synonyms.

The Range of Estrangement

Shklovsky opposed defamiliarization to the process of habitualization, or
rather automation, when a person gets used to things surrounding him so much that
he is no longer able to see their uniqueness. Defamiliarization, on the contrary,
gives “the sensation of things”3, presents them from a new angle and, thus,
overcomes the stereotypes of thinking. As Shklovsky phrased it later, in the sixties,
defamiliarization shows an object “outside the habitual sequence”.
In the article “Art as Technique” Shklovsky explains how defamiliarization
functions in Leo Tolstoy’s literary works and articles where the writer “describes
an object as if he were seeing it for the first time, an event as if it were happening
for the first time”.
Right after that Shklovsky declares the technique of defamiliarization as the
principle of poetic language where perception is hindered by roughening and
retardation of form – in distinction from practical language of the everyday life.
This additional explanation blurs the boundaries of the notion that seemingly
has just been formulated and raises the problem of the limits of defamiliarization,
or better to say the range of estrangement that has expanded. The question is what
it comprises and what it does not. The purpose of this article is to circumscribe the
range of estrangement and to comprehend its relationship with the process of
automation.
3
Art as Technique, Russian Formalist Criticism, Four Essays, translated and with an
introductory by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, University of Nebraska Press, 1965
 Ideological Defamiliarization
There are two kinds of defamiliarization. The first one, let us call it
ideological, is concentrated in philosophical works, including philosophical essays.
The other kind is artistic; it reveals itself in various devices and will be analyzed
below4.
As for ideological defamiliarization, Carlo Ginzburg5 finds its origins6 in
“The Thoughts” of Marcus Aurelius, who tried to contemplate things in their true
light and, thus, wipe away the false impressions of these things, i.e. stereotypes. In
such a way, for example, instead of saying “a purple robe” (it is well-known that
purple was worn by the higher classes) Marcus Aurelius defines it as “sheep's wool
dyed with the blood of a shell-fish”. It looks as if the purple robe were described
by a stranger, a person unfamiliar with what it is. All the words are correct, but we
hardly recognize an object seen through a stranger’s eyes, and that estranges this
object, defamiliarizes it. Carlo Ginzburg rightfully notes that the same device was
actively used among writers of the Enlightenment, and Leo Tolstoy also inherited
this tradition.
Like Marcus Aurelius whom he admired, Tolstoy uses defamiliarization to
unveil a false impression. Let us give one more definition to this technique. To
achieve his aim, Tolstoy depicts an object through general words – hyperonymes.
A simple example: instead of the narrow concept of war, the writer speaks of the
broader notion of killing. Defamiliarization is used as mean for ideological ends in
this case. Tolstoy often exploits it both in his literary works and philosophical

4
See chapter “Arrangement of Estrangement”.
5
Making Things Strange: The Prehistory of a Literary Device – Representations, No. 56, Special
Issue: The New Erudition (Autumn, 1996), pp. 8-28

6
Late Shklovsky criticized the idea of defamiliarization. He did not only reject his previous
words about art as “a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object” when “the object is not
important”, but also regretted he had written of defamiliarization as a unique thing because he
found out it had been detected a long time before him, by Novalis, for instance. However, self-
flagellation of Shklovsky is a tricky problem that goes beyond the topic of this article.
essays7 – usually to gainsay various phenomena he thinks vicious8, but sometimes
also to emphasize good ones9. At the same time, it is obvious that defamiliarization
should be used accurately because a thing can be mechanically unmasked without
deep insight in its nature, and defamiliarization may turn out a destructive weapon
instead of a practical tool.

Retardation in Definition
Sometimes defamiliarization is even undesirable. Journalism is an apt
example. In distinction from philosophical essays10, there is almost no
defamiliarization in journalism11. A reporter has to transmit some message to
audience as fast, briefly and clearly as possible. For that reason a reporter’s
language is simple and sometimes pedestrian, that is practical language of
everyday life; no wonder “journalism” stems from the French word “jour” and
originates in Roman “Acta Diurna”, or “Daily Acts”, a kind of newspaper, one of
the first mass media in history. So “dailiness” is the essence of journalism and a
reporter is constricted in means of expression. Even a good journalist who shuns

7
For instance, Leo Tolstoy’s articles on patriotism, namely, “Patriotism and Government”,
“Patriotism or Peace?”, “Christianity and Patriotism”, and others.
8
In this case, art may be regarded not only as a device, according to Shklovsky, but also as a de-
vice, according to Tolstoy
9
A good example is the two scenes with the same oak in “War and Peace”. When Prince
Andrew Bolkonsky encounters the oak for the first time, he compares his life to that of the oak:
he sees the oak as “a scornful monster” that contrasts with “the smiling birchtrees” and refuses
“to yield to the charm of spring”. But later when Prince Andrew finds the same old oak again, it
turns out to be “quite transfigured, spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage”; and
suddenly Bolkonsky reappraises his own existence and is “seized by an unreasoning spring-time
feeling of joy and renewal”.
10
In Russian there is a special term for it – “publitsistika”, or publicism to make it sound
English; this kind of social journalism may be likened to a speech of on orator.
11
Save for some defamiliarizing devices like deliberate word-contamination (politics +
entertainment = politainment, Bill Plympton + cartoons = Plymptoons) and puns (false start –
about the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that is still not ratified). However, in journalism
and also in advertising these devices are used merely to attract attention while in belles-lettres
they truly defamiliarize certain objects (see the chapter “Artistic Defamiliarization”).
stock phrases frequently resorts to fixed forms that are easily perceived because
they do not require time for consideration. That is the language that we hear each
day watching news. In fact, it is even more practical than the one we speak in
everyday life.
That is why an inclination towards excessive automation is a peril for
journalism, especially in totalitarian regimes, or closed societies by Karl Popper’s
expression. Such kind of journalism speaks the language of ideological clichés –
not to save time for communication, but to exclude any.
The language of the Soviet press illustrates it well. To prove that, let us
compare the language of “Pravda”, the number one newspaper of the USSR, with
Newspeak12 in George Orwell’s “1984” and outline the conclusions.
The purpose of Newspeak was elimination of thinking; it had not only to
“provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to
the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible (italics
mine)”. Newspeak was going to achieve its objective by the destruction of words,
“cutting the language down to the bone”, or using economy as a metaphor13, by
deflation of language. However, the Soviet Union could not afford destroying
Russian and other languages of its republics; to think so would be unrealistic.
Instead, the washing-out of sense was attained with the help of hyperinflation of
language14 and consequently meaning. It was part of the propaganda which, on the
one hand, clearly declared its dogmata, but, on the other either suppressed ideas
inimical to the regime or covered the pettiness of its own postulates and incapacity

12
It is essential to note that in the 1920’s in Russia there was a society of linguists who tried to
devise a new language adapted to the necessities of the Revolution. It was called “novoyaz”
which is the exact translation of Orwell’s neologism into Russian.
13
Lawrence Crawford believes Shklovsky elaborated an economic theory of literature when
speaking of the law of economizing the reader’s attention in “Art as Device” – Lawrence
Crawford, “Viktor Shklovskij: Différance in Defamiliarization”, Duke University Press, Vol. 36,
No. 3 (Summer, 1984), pp. 209-219.
14
An essay called “Hyperinflation of Word” has been dedicated to this problem by the author of
this article – published in “Journalism and the Culture of Russian Language” magazine issued at
the Moscow State University, No. 3, 2008.
for dialogue by the redundancy of its language15. Imagine two people talking as
usual, you can understand whatever they say, but admit there is a thousand of them
speaking simultaneously – you will not be able to hear a word except meaningless
buzz.
Just like this, the language of “Pravda” is cumbersome and impassable, and
that is why logical mistakes escape from the reader’s attention, as well as some
funny slip-ups: «For five and a half centuries of the existence of Russian artillery,
has it been accompanied by battle victorious glory (redundancy – V.L.). Not only
during the days of the Great Patriotic War did its power and juggernaut destructive
force display itself in full scale and scope hitherto unseen (redundancy – V.L.). For
many years the Bolshevik party and the Soviet government, following the
instructions of Comrade Stalin, have daily and caringly (italics mine) been forging
the power of the Soviet artillery industry, have been developing and rearing
(redundancy – V.L.) artillery troops. This yielded its victorious results (redundancy
– V.L.) on the fields of battles against the hordes of German-Fascist aggressors and
Japanese imperialists”16. This paragraph is so overburdened that the ridiculous
word combination to forge caringly remains unnoticed. This is only one of the
sixteen paragraphs of which the article consists.
It is evident from this example that roughened and retarded form is not
always a sign of defamiliarization and of poetic language – despite what Shklovsky
said.

Defamation of Defamiliarization

15
It does not by any means imply that everyone who wrote and spoke this language was aware of
its effects; on the reverse, only the few understood them and among them even the fewer
apparently admired. Orwell also delineates such a person named Syme who worked on the
Newspeak Dictionary in “1984”.

“The Celebration of the Stalin’s Artillery”, “Pravda”, No. 279 (10361), Sunday 24 of
16

November 1946.
 Many used to castigate defamiliarization among the ideas of OPOYAZ, the
Society for the Study of Poetic Language to which Viktor Shklovsky, its founder,
belonged along with Yuri Tynyanov, Boris Eikhenbaum and others17. Marxists, of
course, scolded Russian Formalism that did not approach literature in terms of
what later became known as socialist realism in 1932. However, not just Marxists
were critical of formalists. There was a great thinker at the same time who debated
with them – it was Mikhail Bakhtin. In “The Problem of Content, Material and
Form in Verbal Art”, he treats formalists quite ambiguously; he does not simply
object to the formal (or morphological) method saying that it overestimates the role
of material in art (for example, linguistic aspects in literature), but also
acknowledges some of its theoretical breakthroughs.

A representative of the Bakhtin circle Pavel Medvedev18 was much more

consistent and caustic in his critics. In “The Formal Method in the Study of
Literature” he writes19: “Indeed, according to the teaching of formalists, poetic
language can only “defamiliarize” and extricate from automatization solely what
has already been created in other systems of language. It does not itself create new
constructions. It merely compels one to sense a construction already created, but an
insensible, an automatized one. It has to wait till life’s practical language,
following its purposes and intentions, will deign to create a new verbal
construction, make it habitual, automatize, and only then poetic language appears
on the scene and triumphantly extricates this construction from automatization. To
such parasitic existence poetic language is doomed by the formalists”.

17
Even though they are better known as the Russian formalists, the “formalists” themselves did
not like the word “formalism” so much, and it indeed is quite abusive in Russian and signifies a
pedant or a bureaucrat. The word “formalism” was used by their adversaries from different
ideological camps.
18
Many scholars believe that the author of the “Formal Method” is an alter ego of Bakhtin. The
same thing is asserted about another opponent of formalists, Valentin Voloshinov. Significantly,
Russian publishing house “Labyrinth” printed the abovementioned work of Pavel Medvedev in
the book series called “Bakhtin under the Mask”.
19
The translation is mine. Medvedev P.N. (M.M. Bakhtin) The Formal Method in the Study of
Literature (Part 3, chapter 1 – Poetic language as the object of poetics), Moscow, Labyrinth
1993.
 There are many other counterarguments in Medvedev’s book that touch
upon poetic language and other important issues, yet they deserve a separate
analysis. However, one can elicit from Medvedev’s words a major challenge to the
idea of defamiliarization. Let us call it the problem of context.

The Problem of Context

In “Art as Technique” Shklovsky asserts that facile language of Alexander
Pushkin that is nowadays pleasant to the ear was uneasily perceived by the poet’s
contemporaries at the background of a more intricate style of the 18th century. To
this Shklovsky adds that there was “the consternation of Pushkin's contemporaries
over the vulgarity of his expressions” because he allegedly “used the popular
language as a special device for prolonging attention”.
Indeed, on the one hand, the fact that Pushkin used either “vulgar” Russian
words, or French and English ones in their original transcription, may be regarded
as an act of defamiliarizing certain objects described with the help of unanticipated
words. On the other, it is very debatable whether the unique style of Pushkin is
defamiliarized. Yet it is obvious that in different epochs the same text can sound
differently: either strange and unexpected or hackneyed. Taking this and what
Pavel Medvedev says into consideration, we can now turn to the the problem of
context.
The following statements may seem evident and trite, and would be
superfluous only if there were no confusion over the problem of context. Here is
my attempt to solve it presented in the form of a theorem and proving.
Theorem.
Even when a writer is not thinking of defamiliarization, he or she can
unknowingly implement it in his or her text, as well as some other devices
(zeugma, for instance) that will show up later, like light on a negative. However, if
some part of text A is used in text B for the purpose of defamiliarization, text A
does not necessarily contain defamiliarization.
 Proving. 1. To prove that, let us consider the epigraph to “The Gift” of
Nabokov, which is taken from “The Textbook of Russian Grammar” written by P.
Smirnovsky: “An oak is a tree. A rose is a flower. A deer is an animal. A sparrow
is a bird. Russia is our fatherland. Death is inevitable”. Can it be called
defamiliarization? Certainly: Russia and death, the main topics of the novel, are in
one row with a tree, a rose, and a deer; bitter judgments about Russia that is lost,
but still is a fatherland, and about death that is inevitable in spite of our hopes
stand together with the axioms of life that are irrefutable; in such a way statements
about Russia and death also become irrefutable; they are shown “outside the
habitual sequence” according to Shklovsky.
2. It has been proven that the epigraph to “The Gift” is a display of
defamiliarization. But it is questionable whether there was any defamiliarization in
Smirnovsky’s textbook itself. To begin with, these grammatical examples of
Smirnovsky should be taken separately because they were not intended to
constitute a text. Secondly, even if we took them together without context and
presented as a statement, they could fairly be regarded as a logically erroneous 20
relation of discordance, when the volumes of notions A & B totally do not coincide
(e.g., a tower and a fish, or “he is a good man and has been into politics for a
while”). However, in Nabokov’s case the words about a deer, Russia, and death are
related to the novel and the relation of discordance transforms into a device that
defamiliarizes an object or several objects. Aage A. Hansen-Love is absolutely
right when he says that in one literary work a certain device “can be used and
perceived as the device of defamiliarization” 21 and in another situation it cannot.
One may disagree with the second point of the proving and say that he or she
sees defamiliarization in these clauses of Smirnovsky anyway, even taken together

20
A certain mistake can be used for defamiliarization, though there are simpler examples than
the one discussed above, for example, creative misspelling of words or folk etymology.
21
The translation is mine. Aage A. Hansen-Love Russian Formalism” Methodological
Reconstruction of its Development on the basis of the Principle of Defamiliarization / Translated
from German by S.A. Romashko – Moscow, Languages of Russian Culture, 2001, page 13
apart from Nabokov. So this brings us to the way he or she sees something, i.e.
perception.
3. The difficult question of perception is analyzed by Jorge Luis Borges in
his “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”. Borges writes that the words from
“Don Quixote” literally repeated by the 20th century writer acquire a new sense.
One might derive that everything depends on perception and history then, so
anything can become defamiliarized one day.
However, not only Pavel Medvedev was against such approach. It was also
the Russian formalists themselves who struggled with it. Eikhenbaum wrote in
“Theory of the Formal Method” that before formalists literature had been nobody’s
land, “res nullis”, as Alexander Veselovsky, the father of the historical poetics,
defined it. In other words, instead of the literariness of literature, by Roman
Jakobson’s term, scholars preferred to discuss literature through psychology (as in
the case with perception), or history, culture, politics, economics, and so on.
To sum it up, Borges’s experiment with modernization of an old text can
easily be turned into a sophism, yet a beautiful one. In fact, there are two different
situations. a) Suppose an author uses an archaic word, phrase, or an excerpt from
another (con)text to achieve defamiliarization. b) Suppose the author’s descendants
take his text as archaic in general, since its vocabulary and the way it approaches
life is unfamiliar to them. In point b, we should not speak of defamiliarization,
because in this case defamiliarization, once again, can be anywhere – in a book of
recipes, or in a textbook, or in a poster seen either by an ancient man or an alien (a
device used by science-fiction writers).
Conclusion. Thus, to solve the problem of context, we should distinguish
defamiliarization itself from the defamiliarizing effect. The latter can be
determined exclusively by peculiarities of the recipient’s consciousness. As for the
term itself, the notion of defamiliarizing effect is not needed, because all these
phenomena of perception were described in psychology a long time ago. In fact,
such a term would be not only superfluous, but deleterious because it washes up
the notion of defamiliarization/estrangement.
 Now it is time to circumscribe the range of defamiliarization/estrangement
as promised in the beginning. Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, to limit is to define.

Arrangement of Estrangement
Let us attempt our own definition of defamiliarization/estrangement.
Defamiliarization (estrangement) is a technique of actualizing an object
represented in art. As a result, a given object is reconsidered or revised, anew
or otherwise.
Defamiliarization always deals with what is already known, already exists. It
is impossible to defamiliarize what has just been created because it already is
perceived as a strange and unfamiliar thing. This is an answer to Pavel Medvedev’s
(or Mikhail Bakhtin’s) criticism.
However, Pavel Medvedev also reproached Viktor Shklovsky and formalists
for not defining automation to which defamiliarization is opposed. We will not
dwell on this rebuke but will rather provide our own definition. Automation (or
automatization) is such state of an object that makes one perceive it with
certain attitude. Here is the way Britannica describes attitude: “attitude, in social
psychology, a cognition, often with some degree of aversion or attraction
(emotional valence), that reflects the classification and evaluation of objects and
events. While attitudes logically are hypothetical constructs (i.e., they are inferred
but not objectively observable), they are manifested in conscious experience,
verbal reports, overt behaviour, and physiological indicators. <…> The concept of
attitude arises from attempts to account for observed regularities in the behaviour
of individual persons.”
The problem is that it is almost impossible to detect automation in a text,
save for the cases with obvious clichés. Usually automation is neutral and relative.
A fresh idea, e.g., can be automated two years later. Automation belongs to the
domain of psychology; defamiliarization belongs to the field of literature and art
and shows itself in different devices depending on the kind of actualization of an
object.
 Artistic Defamiliarization
This brings us two the second type of defamiliarization – the artistic one.
Carlo Ginzburg discovered it in Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”. In
distinction from Marcus Aurelius and Leo Tolstoy, Ginzburg says, the purpose of
Proust, when he portrayed things as if unfamiliar, was to keep the fresh appearance
of them untouched; that is why Proust depicted things as an impressionist who
conveys emotions.
However, this is only one of the ways in which artistic defamiliarization can
be used. It has just been said that defamiliarization “shows itself in different
devices depending on the kind of actualization of an object”. Let us briefly name
some of them: folk etymology, word-contamination; parables, enigmas, i.e.
description of one thing with the help of another; hence, it is admissible to add
parallelism, metaphor (especially symphora (συμφορά), a metaphor where the link
between two objects compared is omitted). Ideological defamiliarization, as in
Tolstoy’s writings, also can be regarded as a device that also is defined as
defamiliarization (by Shklovsky and others), but in fact is part of defamiliarization
as a general principle of actualization of objects represented in art.
To sum it up, artistic defamiliarization is a term for a number of devices
primarily used to pursue artistic goals rather than ideological.

Automated Defamiliarization

The term automated defamiliarization suggested by the author of this article

does not pretend to be accurate and scientific; it is a working tool for literary
criticism and is connected with perception of a text rather than a text itself.

Automated defamiliarization reflects a widely spread tendency when an

artist defamiliarizes an object mechanically, using a template: nominally there is
defamiliarization, but it is deprived of efficacy, and the defamiliarizing effect is not
attained. It would be interesting to analyze the works of contemporary writers from
this point of view in order to descry unoriginality often concealed in the shade of
intertexuality.

Chekhov probably was among the first ones who laid bare the phenomenon
of automated defamiliarization. He describes it through Constantine Treplieff’s
words in “The Seagull”, act IV: “Trigorin has worked out a process of his own,
and descriptions are easy for him. He writes that the neck of a broken bottle lying
on the bank glittered in the moonlight, and that the shadows lay black under the
mill-wheel. There you have a moonlight night before your eyes”.

In the automated world a person deals with the fixed notions of various
phenomena, the objects “enveloped in a sack”22 as Shkovsky wrote. Without them,
the mechanism of the society would not function. The task here is absolutely
pragmatic – to make everything work. The way everything is created should be
questioned only as much as practically applicable; the difference between
knowledge, information about a thing and its comprehension should not occupy a
person who thinks in normal (i.e. mediocre and ossified) terms. Comprehension is
unprofitable, it is superfluous: there is no need to spend time on what one can
manage without. The automated world is utilitarian.

The unrestrained perception of the world reveals new and fresh things, it
makes the world sparkle with one more facet, and after that these new and fresh
things are absorbed by mundane world, by vanity.

Defamiliarization rescues things from there. That is its main task or

condition. And here is its heresy for it withstands the social mechanism with its
norm. Defamiliarization is the enemy of general notions. Let it go and the mankind
will once again find itself in unawareness face to face with the universe.
Defamiliarization is dangerous.

22
Art as Technique, Russian Formalist Criticism, Four Essays, translated and with an
introductory by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, University of Nebraska Press, 1965
 But when defamiliarization was discovered in literature, named and defined,
when it became a notion itself and was thus enveloped and absorbed by the world,
it became to a considerable degree automated. A very well-aimed riposte of the
world. And that makes a writer defamiliarize the way he or she defamiliarizes and
vary his or her style.
The Conclusion
In the past several decades, interest in the ideas of the Russian formalists
revived. Thus, for example, the avant-garde magazine published in Connecticut is
called “Ostranenie”23.
Defamiliarization, deformation, poetic language… - all these ideas of
OPOYAZ are still attractive thanks to their boldness and originality.
Defiant defamiliarization defeated its adversaries; it survived and stimulated
a further development of literary theory.
Yet today it not merely is of theoretical importance. Today it is even more
relevant than in the beginning of the 20th century. Defamiliarizatin is essential as a
“noetic principle” (Aage A. Hansen-Love).
Martin Heidegger, a great master of defamiliarization, wrote in “Insight into
That Which Is”24: “All distances in time and space are decreasing… Humans cross
the longest stretches in the shortest time. They put great distances behind
themselves, and thus put everything at a short distance from themselves. However,
the hasty elimination of all distances does not bring about nearness; for nearness
does not consist in a small measure of distance. Something that stands closest to us
in terms of distance – through images in film, through sound on the radio – can
remain remote from us. Something that is ungraspably far away from us can be
close. Short distance is not already nearness. Great distance is not yet remoteness”.
When life is being mechanized and simplified, Being suffers. That is why
defamiliarization/estrangement gives us a chance to return to contemplation

23
Ostranenie magazine. – URL: http://www.wesleyan.edu/wsa/ostranenie/
24
The Heidegger Reader, translated by Jerome Veith, Indiana University Press, pages 253-254
instead of generating standard intellectual processes where we compute rather than
think.
Defamiliarization does not answer questions. But it helps us to see better, and
that already is not so little.
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2. Bakhtin M.M. “The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Art” //
Moscow, Voprosy literatury I estetiki, 1975

3. Medvedev P.N. (M.M. Bakhtin) The Formal Method in the Study of

Literature, Moscow, Labyrinth 1993

4. Carlo Ginzburg. Making Things Strange: The Prehistory of a Literary Device

– Representations, No. 56, Special Issue: The New Erudition (Autumn,
1996), pp. 8-28

5. Boris Eikhenbaum, Theory of the Formal Method, Russian Formalist

Criticism, Four Essays, translated and with an introductory by Lee T. Lemon
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7. Martin Heidegger, “Insight into That Which Is”, The Heidegger Reader,
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8. Lawrence Crawford, “Viktor Shklovskij: Différance in Defamiliarization”,

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9. Leo Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government”, “Patriotism or Peace?”,

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12. Shklovsky, Art as Technique, Russian Formalist Criticism, Four Essays,

translated and with an introductory by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis,
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14. Shklovsky, The Bow-String: On Incompatibility of the Compatible //

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