Editing Distancing effect (section)

== Origin ==
The term ''Verfremdungseffekt'' is rooted in the [[Russian formalism|Russian Formalist]] notion of the device of ''making strange'' (приём остранения ''priyom ostraneniya''), which literary critic [[Viktor Shklovsky]] claims is the essence of all art.<ref>"Art as Device", translated by Benjamin Sher in Shklovsky, ''The Theory of Prose'' (Bloomington, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1991).</ref> Lemon and Reis's 1965 English translation<ref>Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, eds. and trans., ''Russian Formalist Criticism'' (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press).</ref> of Shklovsky's 1917 coinage as "[[defamiliarization]]", combined with John Willett's 1964 translation of Brecht's 1935 coinage as "alienation effect"—and the canonization of both translations in Anglophone literary theory in the decades since—has served to obscure the close connections between the two terms. Not only is the root of both terms "strange" (''stran-'' in Russian, ''fremd'' in German), but both terms are unusual in their respective languages: ''ostranenie'' is a neologism in Russian, while ''Verfremdung'' is a resuscitation of a long-obsolete term in German. In addition, according to some accounts, Shklovsky's Russian friend playwright [[Sergei Tretyakov (writer)|Sergei Tretyakov]] taught Shklovsky's term to Brecht during Brecht's visit to Moscow in the spring of 1935.<ref>For discussion, see [[Douglas Robinson (academic)|Douglas Robinson]], ''Estrangement and the Somatics of Literature: Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Brecht'' (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).</ref> For this reason, many scholars have recently taken to using ''estrangement'' to translate both terms: "the estrangement device" in Shklovsky, "the estrangement effect" in Brecht.

It was in any case not long after returning in the spring of 1935 from Moscow, where he saw a command performance of [[Peking opera|Beijing Opera]] techniques by [[Mei Lanfang]], that Brecht first used the German term in print<ref>[https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/download/attachments/75699736/Willett-Brecht-BrechtonTheatre-Excerpts.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1297321537000 "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130719201339/https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/download/attachments/75699736/Willett-Brecht-BrechtonTheatre-Excerpts.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1297321537000 |date=July 19, 2013 }}, in Willett 99.</ref> to label an approach to theater that discouraged involving the audience in an illusory narrative world and in the emotions of the characters. Brecht thought the audience required an emotional distance to reflect on what was being presented in critical and objective ways, rather than being ''taken out of themselves'' as conventional entertainment attempts to do.

The proper English translation of ''Verfremdungseffekt'' is a matter of controversy.  The word is sometimes rendered as ''defamiliarization effect'', ''estrangement effect'', ''distantiation'', ''alienation effect'', or ''distancing effect''. This has caused some confusion for English scholars who confuse the German word ''Verfremdung'' with ''Entfremdung''. In ''Brecht and Method'', [[Fredric Jameson]] abbreviates ''Verfremdungseffekt'' as "the V-Effekt";<ref name="Jameson">{{Cite book |last=Jameson |first=Fredric |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39477726 |title=Brecht and method |date=1998 |publisher=Verso |isbn=1-85984-249-6 |location=London |oclc=39477726}}</ref> many scholars similarly leave the word untranslated.

Brecht wanted to "distance" or to "alienate" his audience from the characters and the action and, by dint of that, render them observers who would not become involved in or to sympathize emotionally or to empathize by identifying individually with the characters psychologically; rather, he wanted the audience to understand intellectually the characters' dilemmas and the wrongdoing producing these dilemmas exposed in his dramatic plots. By being thus "distanced" emotionally from the characters and the action on stage, the audience could be able to reach such an intellectual level of understanding (or intellectual empathy); in theory, while alienated emotionally from the action and the characters, they would be empowered on an intellectual level both to analyze and perhaps even to try to change the world, which was Brecht's social and political goal as a playwright and the driving force behind his dramaturgy.