Defamiliarization - Audrey Watters

to the Formalists, boredom or ennui represented to the situationists the
stifling of expression, creativity, and freedom. The situationists argued
this malaise was fostered by capitalism and the spectacle. As in Brecht’s
formulation, the situationists contended hegemonic forces and institutions
sought to naturalize themselves. Regardless of its manifestation as
aesthetic or ideological banality, these theorists claimed that boredom—byt—
ennui operates to suppress “real” understanding and experience.
Recuperation
Shklovsky, Brecht, and Debord all saw the struggle against boredom as
ongoing. The forces of habit always lay in wait to dull poetic language and
artistic expression. Shklovsky recognized this in “Art as Technique.” In
the closing paragraph, he observes that “should the disordering of rhythm
become a convention, it would be ineffective as a device for the roughening
of the language” (Shklovsky 24). In other words, if the formal elements
Shklovsky identifies with defamiliarization become accepted into everyday
usage, they will lose their ability to “make strange.”
Although the Formalists are often charged with ahistoricism, they did
recognize that literary systems change over time. Hence, Shklovsky
maintained that the deterioration from poetry to everyday language was
inevitable. Defamiliarization is not a give for all time, disrupting
expectations in perpetuity. Rather, forms atrophy, requiring constant
renewal. “The fate of the works of bygone artists of the world,” Shklovsky
contended, “is the same as the fate of the word itself: both shed light on
the path from poetry to prose; both become coated with the glass armour of
the familiar” (cited in Bennett 55).
Debordo and his fellow situationists were similarly concerned with the
degeneration of once radical tactics. Despite their proclamations and
theories about the subversive potential of détournement, the Situationist
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