Defamiliarization or ostranenie (остранение) is the artistic technique of forcing the

audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or strange way (literally "making it strange"),
in order to enhance perception of the familiar.

The term was first coined in 1917 by Victor Shklovsky (or Shklovskij), one of the leading
figures of the movement in literary criticism known as Russian Formalism. Formalism
focused on the artistic strategies of the author and made the literary text itself, and not the
historical, social or political aspects of the work of art, the focus of its study. The result was
an appreciation for the creative act itself. Shklovsky was a member of OPOYAZ
(Obshchestvo izucheniya POeticheskogo YAZyka—Society for the Study of Poetic
Language), one of the two groups, with the Moscow Linguistic Circle, which developed the
critical theories and techniques of Russian Formalism.

Defamiliarization is a central concept of twentieth century art, ranging over movements

Contents
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 1 History
 2 Technique
o 2.1 Defamiliarization in Russian Literature
 3 Literary Antecedents
 4 Legacy
o 4.1 Defamiliarization and Différance
 5 Notes
 6 References
 7 Credits

History
Shklovsky introduced the concept of defamiliarization in his seminal essay, “Art as Device”
(often translated as “Art as Technique”)[1]. The essay begins with the famous dictum, "Art is
thinking in images." The notion that art is characterized by the use of images represents a
"time-honored notion, dating back to Aristotle and upheld in modern times by critics so
dissimilar as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Cecil Day Lewis, George Plexanov, and Herbert
Read"[2]. In Russian literary criticism, it was the major premise of the dean of literary critics,
Vissarion Belinsky, but had become such a commonplace notion that Skhlovsky claims, "The
phrase may be heard from the mouth of a lycee student"[3].

In the essay Shklovsky argues that such a shopworn understanding fails to address the major
feature of art, which is not to be found in its content but its form. One of Shklovsky's major
contentions was that poetic language is fundamentally different than the language that we use
everyday. “Poetic speech is framed speech. Prose 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” [4]. What makes art is not the "image," or the idea, which can
easily be expressed in prosaic form just as well as in poetic form. This difference is the
manipulation of form, or the artist's technique, which is the key to the creation of art.

The image can be given a prosaic presentation but it is not art because the form is not
interesting, it is automatic. This automatic use of language, or “over-automatization” as
Shklovsky refers to it, causes the idea or meaning to “function as though by formula” [5]. This
distinction between artistic language and everyday language, is the distinguishing
characteristic of all art. He invented the term defamiliarization to “distinguish poetic from
practical language on the basis of the former’s perceptibility”[6].

Technique
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.[7]

Defamiliarization serves as a means to force individuals to experience the everyday, the

In studying poetic speak in its phonetic and lexical 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. [8]

According to Shklovsky the technique is meant to challenge the reader's (or viewer's)
expectations and jar their sensibilities. As a consequence, the reader is forced to see from a
different perspective and appreciate the form of the text and not just its content or meaning.
As Aristotle said, “poetic language must appear strange and wonderful” [9].

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. [10]

Defamiliarization in Russian Literature

To illustrate what he means by defamiliarization, Shklovsky uses numerous examples from

In the nineteenth century, the aristocracy spoke primarily French, not Russian. Shklovsky
notes that Pushkin, who is generally credited with creating the Russian literary language
(which is the basis of modern Russian, used the technique through the use of different
dialects.

"Pushkin employed folk speech as a special device of arresting the reader's attention precisely
in the same way that his contemporaries interspersed Russian words in their everyday French
speech (see the examples in Tolstoi's War and Peace." [12]

Literary Antecedents
The technique is not confined to Russian literature, nor is the theory without precedent. The
English Romantic poets made extensive use of it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his Biographia
Literaria, (1817), made the following observation about the poetry of William Wordsworth:
"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."

Legacy
Defamiliarization is one of the key concepts of Russian Formalism and Shklovsky is one of its
most important theorists. Its influence would be widely felt in both twentieth century art and
literary criticism.

It has been associated with the poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose Verfremdungseffekt
("alienation effect") was a potent element of his approach to theater. Brecht's technique, in
turn, has been highly influential for artists and filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and
Yvonne Rainer.

In literary criticism it would provide an important precursor to the development of both

Defamiliarization and Différance

Shklovsky’s defamiliarization is one of the many sources of Jacques Derrida's concept of

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 Shklovskij calls
“perception” can be considered a matrix for production of difference. [13]

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 “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.[14]

Notes
1. ↑ Lawrence Crawford, “Victor Shklovskij: Différance in Defamiliarization.”
Comparative Literature 36 (1984): 209-219. 209. (February 24, 2008). ISSN 0010-
4124
2. ↑ Victor Erlich. Russian Formalism: History Doctrine. (Mouton De Gruyter; 4 Sub ed.
(1965) 1980. ISBN 9027904502), 173-174
3. ↑ Viktor Shklovsky, "Art as Device" in Theory of Prose, translated by Benjamin Sher,
(Dalkey Archive Press, 1990, ISBN 0916583643)
4. ↑ Shklovsky, 1990, 20
5. ↑ Shklovsky, 1990, 16
6. ↑ Crawford, 1984: 209.
7. ↑ Shklovsky, 1990, 16
8. ↑ Shklovsky, 1990, 19
9. ↑ Shklovsky, 1990, 19
10. ↑ Uri Margolin, “Russian Formalism.” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory
and Criticism, Ed. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman. (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. ISBN 9780801845604), 2005
11. ↑ Shklovsky, 1990, 16
12. ↑ Shklovsky, 1990, 13
13. ↑ Crawford, 1984: 212
14. ↑ Crawford, 1984: 218

References
 Crawford, Lawrence. “Victor Shklovskij: Différance in Defamiliarization.”
Comparative Literature 36 (1984): 209-219. February 24, 2008. ISSN 0010-4124
 Erlich, Victor. Russian Formalism: History Doctrine. Mouton De Gruyter; 4 Sub ed.
(1965) 1980. ISBN 9027904502. 173-174.
 Margolin, Uri. "Russian Formalism." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory
and Criticism, Ed. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman. Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. ISBN 9780801845604.
 Ostranenie Magazine Ostranenie Magazine .wesleyan. Retrieved December 16, 2008.
 Shklovskij, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary Theory, An Anthology, Ed. Julie
Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 1998. ISBN
9780631200291
 Shklovsky, Viktor, "Art as Device", 20, in Theory of Prose, translated by Benjamin
Sher, Dalkey Archive Press, 1990. ISBN 0916583643.