One of the most fascinating ideas in literary theory is that literature does not merely reflect reality, it reshapes how we see it. The Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky called this process defamiliarization, arguing that the purpose of art is to make the familiar world appear strange so that we perceive it more intensely.
In everyday life, perception becomes automatic. We stop truly noticing objects, emotions, and even people because they are too familiar. Literature intervenes in this process by slowing down perception and forcing readers to look again. Through unusual language, unexpected metaphors, or unconventional narrative structures, writers make us experience the ordinary as if for the first time.
Why Familiarity Dulls Perception
Routine turns experience into habit. We read quickly, see quickly, and judge quickly. Shklovsky believed that this automation deadens emotional and intellectual response. Art, therefore, exists to disrupt this mechanical way of seeing. By complicating form and language, literature resists easy consumption.
The goal is not confusion for its own sake, but renewed awareness.
Language as a Tool of Estrangement
Poetry often achieves defamiliarization through imagery and sound. A simple object—a street, a window, a body—may be described in ways that feel unexpected or even unsettling. Prose, too, can estrange the reader through fragmented syntax, shifting perspectives, or intense sensory detail.
The reader pauses, rereads, and reconsiders.
Narrative Techniques and Perspective
Defamiliarization is not limited to style; it also operates through narrative viewpoint. When a story is told from an unusual perspective (such as that of a child, an outsider, or a non-human consciousness) common social practices appear strange and open to critique. What is normally accepted becomes questionable.
The world is seen sideways rather than straight on.
Ethical and Political Implications
By making the familiar strange, literature also exposes what is usually taken for granted: social hierarchies, gender roles, violence, and injustice. Estrangement creates distance, and distance allows reflection. Readers are encouraged not just to feel, but to think.
Aesthetic technique thus becomes a form of critical awareness.
Relevance in Contemporary Reading
In a digital culture driven by speed and constant scrolling, defamiliarization regains importance. It teaches slow reading and close attention. When a text resists instant understanding, it restores depth to the reading experience and reasserts literature’s capacity to challenge perception.
Difficulty becomes a mode of insight.
Conclusion
Defamiliarization reminds us that literature’s task is not only to tell stories but to transform vision. By disrupting habit and routine, it renews our relationship with language, experience, and reality itself. What we thought we knew becomes unfamiliar, and in that strangeness, meaning re-emerges.
