1 Explain the concepts of defamiliarization and art as a technique introduced by the critics of
Russian Formalism
Defamiliarization or ostranenie () is the artistic technique of presenting to
audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of
the familiar. A central concept in 20th-century art and theory, ranging over movements
including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre, andscience fiction, it is also used as a tactic by
recent movements such as culture jamming.
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.
In "Art as Technique," Shlovksy addresses the ways in which people do things habitually to the
point of doing them automatically or unconsciously. He uses the example that holding a pen
for the first time is, of course, much different from holding it for the ten thousandth time. By
the ten thousandth time, it is so automatic, we don't think about doing it; and to the extreme
extent that we don't consciously think about holding the pen, it is as if we are not doing it.
Clearly, we do this for the economy of it, to focus on other things. But this is a habit of passive
thinking and action.
Shklovsky notes that we perceive objects in this passive, or half-attentive way. Using
Pogodin's example of the sentence "The Swiss mountains are beautiful", Shlovksy gives his
algebraic formulation of it as "T, S, m, a, b." He suggests that, in our habitual inattentiveness,
we perceive objects in this condensed way as well. We only pay attention to a small or surface
aspect of the object.
In general, this is a problem in our individual lives. Being habitually unaware of everything
that is going on locally and in the world is a lack of individual and social awareness. In being
passive, we become familiar with objects in this algebraic, condensed form. The technique of
art is to make these things "unfamiliar" and to make us more active, less passive, to make us
exert more effort in perceiving things and thinking about them.
This is why Shklovsky, and others after him, believed that poetry fills this criteria of making
the familiar unfamiliar (more so than prose). Poetry is condensed but with odd juxtapositions
of words and "roughened" rhythm and language, the reader is forced to slow down and think
more about each word and its associations with the other words and the poem as a whole.
This is the effect of defamiliarization. By making the familiar unfamiliar, the author or artist
creates a work in which the reader cannot simply perceive it automatically; he/she has to give
more effort, think more actively and creatively.
2 How did the Russian Formalists assume the study of Literature?
Russian formalism is distinctive for its emphasis on the functional role of literary devices and
its original conception of literary history. Russian Formalists advocated a "scientific" method
for studying poetic language, to the exclusion of traditional psychological and culturalhistorical approaches.
Two general principles underlie the Formalist study of literature: first, literature itself, or
rather, those of its features that distinguish it from other human activities, must constitute
the object of inquiry of literary theory; second, "literary facts" have to be prioritized over the
metaphysical commitments of literary criticism, whether philosophical, aesthetic or
psychological (Steiner, "Russian Formalism" 16). To achieve these objectives several models
were developed.
The formalists agreed on the autonomous nature of poetic language and its specificity as an
object of study for literary criticism. Their main endeavor consisted in defining a set of
properties specific to poetic language, be it poetry or prose, recognizable by their "artfulness"
and consequently analyzing them as such.
3 Explain the architectural metaphor described by Marx to explain the historical and social
conditions.
By way of a problematic architectural metaphor, Marx views production, economics, and
technology as the base of society upon which all forms of thought, culture, politics, and law
arise as a related superstructure. The ruling ideas of society are those of the ruling class,
and they comprise an ideology broadly, a conceptual outlook or worldview -- that
advances elite interests and justifies class domination as good, natural, and the only possible
social arrangement. But the dominant class worldview, Marx noted, is a biased distortion of
reality and becomes a false consciousness for those who uncritically accept it as given,
factual, and true. In reference to a key element of capitalist ideology, Marx described how the
vast machinery of production spawns a commodity fetishism whereby objects
(commodities) take on human-like qualities (assuming an apparent life of their own) and
subjects (workers) become more and more like things integrated into technological systems.
Bourgeois economists, themselves deluded by this alien topsy-turvy world, treated the
commodity as if it were independent of social relationships and capitalist exploitation.
4 Give an account of Marxs formulations of ideological systems and the conflict of social
classes.
The identity of a social class derives from its relationship to the means of production; Marx
describes the social classes in capitalist societies:
Proletariat: "the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their
own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live".[22] As Andrei Platonov
expressed "The working class is my home country and my future is linked with the
proletariat."[23] The capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions enabling the
bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat because the workers' labour generates a surplus value
greater than the workers' wages.
Bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the
proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat; they subdivide as bourgeoisie and the petit
bourgeoisie.
Petit bourgeoisie are those who work and can afford to buy little labour power i.e. small
business owners, peasant landlords, trade workers et al. Marxism predicts that the continual
reinvention of the means of production eventually would destroy the petit bourgeoisie,
degrading them from the middle class to the proletariat.
Lumpenproletariat: The outcasts of society such as criminals, vagabonds, beggars,
prostitutes, et al., who have no stake in the economy and no mind of their own and so are
decoyed by every bidder.
Landlords: an historically important social class who retain some wealth and power.
Peasantry and farmers: a scattered class incapable of organizing and effecting socio-economic
change, most of whom would enter the proletariat, and some become landlords.
According to Marx, when mechanization and automation increases, workers are less needed
and therefore get lower wages. This leads to society being split into two "classes": the
capitalists who own the factories with the machines, and the proletarians, who own nothing
and become poorer and poorer. Obviously, this isn't a stable situation; eventually the
proletarians become so poor that they have nothing to lose by inciting a revolution, and the
system breaks down. After that, society becomes at first Socialistic, which means that all
capital is owned by the State; at this point, distinct states still exist. Finally, the state becomes
superfluous and the capital is directly owned by the people as a collective. At this point, we
are in the Communistic stage.
