Editing Defamiliarization (section)

== Related concepts ==

=== Différance ===

Shklovsky's defamiliarization can also be compared to [[Jacques Derrida]]'s concept of [[différance]]:
<blockquote>
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.{{r|crawford|p=212}} 
</blockquote>
Since the term différance refers to the dual meanings of the [[French language|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).

<blockquote>
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.{{r|crawford|p=218}} 
</blockquote>

=== 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]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Royle|first=Nicholas|title=The Uncanny|location=New York|publisher=Routledge|date=2003}}</ref>  In ''Das Unheimliche'' ("The Uncanny"),<ref name=freud>{{cite book|last=Freud|first=Sigmund|title=The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud|volume=XVII|editor-first=James|editor-last=Strachey|location=London|publisher=Hogarth Press|date=1955}}</ref> 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.{{r|freud|p=220}}  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."{{r|freud|p=230}}  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.{{r|freud|p=250}}

=== The Estrangement effect ===

Defamiliarization has been associated with the poet and playwright [[Bertolt Brecht]], 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'".<ref>{{cite book|last=Willett|first=John|title=Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic|location=New York|publisher=Hill and Wang|date=1964}}</ref> Brecht, in turn, has been highly influential for artists and film-makers including [[Jean-Luc Godard]] and [[Yvonne Rainer]].

[[Science fiction]] 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 [[Recontextualisation|recontextualization]] of the familiar.<ref name="spiegel">{{cite journal|url=https://archive.org/details/readable-id-goes-here-sf|title=Things Made Strange: On the Concept of "Estrangement" in Science Fiction Theory|last=Spiegel|first=Simon|journal=Science Fiction Studies|volume=35|number=3|pages=369–385|date=Nov 2008 |jstor=25475174 |doi-access=free |doi=10.5167/uzh-8369}}</ref>