OSTRANENIE. (definition from Geocity) This Russian term of literary analysis refers to the experience of having the familiar and commonplace made strange or alien. Such a process of estranging those experiences, which are ordinarily taken for granted, challenges the perceiver to re-engage their significance and perhaps discover new or unexpected meanings. As an aesthetic device, the process of ostranenie permeates the fine arts of the West in the course of this century. Otherwise ordinary and unexamined experiences are made strange or unfamiliar in a variety of ways, most blatantly through changing the context of the familiar experience, though it may be accomplished quite subtly, simply through the use of a new and vivid metaphor. What is most striking about the use of ostranenie in this era is its application to the aesthetic processes themselves, as artists challenge our familiar ways of relating to paintings, plays or novels. The first use of this term is attributed to literary critic and Russian formalist, Viktor Shklovskii, in his 1916 essay, "Art as Procedure," in which he describes a process of "defamiliarization." Underlying this concept is an assumption that "normal" perception is familiar and can be described as a "process of `algebrazation’.Either objects are assigned only one proper feature ... or else they function as though by formula and do not appear in cognition."
"The technique of art is to make objects `unfamiliar,' to make forms difficult."
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