Introduction
Art as a technique, as articulated by Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky, represents a revolutionary approach to understanding how literature and artistic expression function to defamiliarize ordinary experience. Shklovsky, one of the founding figures of Russian Formalism, introduced this concept in his seminal 1917 essay "Art as Technique," fundamentally challenging traditional literary criticism that focused primarily on content and meaning. According to Shklovsky, the primary purpose of art is not to convey information or tell stories, but to make the familiar strange, to render the everyday world fresh and perceptible through deliberate artistic intervention. This technique of defamiliarization, or ostranenie in Russian, forces readers to see familiar objects and concepts anew, breaking through automatic perception and habitual thinking patterns that dull our awareness of the world around us Worth keeping that in mind..
People argue about this. Here's where I land on it.
Detailed Explanation
Viktor Shklovsky's concept of art as technique emerged during a period of intense intellectual and artistic transformation in early 20th-century Russia, when formalist critics were seeking to establish literature as a field of scientific inquiry separate from moral, psychological, or historical criticism. Shklovsky argued that traditional literary criticism had become stagnant, focusing too heavily on themes, characters, and social commentary while neglecting the actual mechanisms through which literature achieves its effects. He proposed that what makes literature distinct from non-literary language is not its subject matter but its technique—the specific ways in which language is employed to create aesthetic experience That alone is useful..
The core insight of Shklovsky's theory is that human perception operates through automatic, habitual processes that filter out the unusual characteristics of objects and experiences. When we encounter a familiar object—a chair, for instance—our mind quickly categorizes it and reduces it to a simple concept, stripping away its unique qualities. That said, art intervenes in this process by deliberately disrupting these automatic patterns of perception. And through techniques such as unusual word choice, altered syntax, compressed narrative structure, or novel combinations of sensory details, art forces us to perceive objects as they truly are, rather than as mere representatives of familiar categories. This process of making the familiar strange is what Shklovsky identified as the essential function of literature Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
Adding to this, Shklovsky emphasized that the difficulty or "strangeness" of artistic language is not a flaw but a necessary feature. He wrote that "literary language is defined by its difficulty, by the fact that it is difficult to comprehend.Now, " This difficulty serves a purpose: it slows down the reader's processing of the text, forcing active engagement rather than passive consumption. When language becomes difficult, when familiar words are used in unfamiliar ways, when conventional narrative structures are subverted, the reader must exert effort to understand, and this effort itself constitutes part of the aesthetic experience. The technique of art is thus not an obstacle to comprehension but the very mechanism through which comprehension becomes meaningful Still holds up..
Step-by-Step or Concept Breakdown
To fully grasp Shklovsky's concept, let us examine how defamiliarization works in practice through a systematic breakdown:
Step 1: Recognition of Automatic Perception The process begins with our brain's natural tendency to simplify and categorize the world. When we read the word "chair," we immediately understand it refers to a piece of furniture for sitting. Our mind has already processed and categorized this concept, reducing it to a simple, automatic understanding.
Step 2: Introduction of Artistic Intervention Art enters when the artist deliberately disrupts this automatic recognition. This might occur through unusual descriptive language, unexpected metaphors, or novel syntactic structures that force the reader to slow down and actually process the word rather than simply recognizing its meaning And that's really what it comes down to. Worth knowing..
Step 3: Creation of Defamiliarization Effect The disruption creates what Shklovsky called "defamiliarization"—the familiar becomes strange. A chair described as "a throne for the weary, carved from the bones of forgotten forests" forces us to see beyond our automatic recognition and engage with the object's potential qualities and associations.
Step 4: Renewal of Perception This renewed engagement allows us to experience the object anew, to perceive its unique characteristics and potential meanings that habitual thinking had previously obscured. The technique thus restores the richness of experience that automatic perception tends to flatten Practical, not theoretical..
Real Examples
Consider how this technique functions in various literary works. On top of that, in Gogol's "The Overcoat," the protagonist Akaky Akakiyovich's death is described not in conventional tragic terms but through the accumulation of bizarre and grotesque details that make his demise feel both inevitable and shockingly unfamiliar. The formalist critic Roman Jakobson later expanded on Shklovsky's ideas by demonstrating how different linguistic functions contribute to defamiliarization—for instance, how the expressive function of language emphasizes emotional content through sound patterns and word choice That's the part that actually makes a difference..
In poetry, the technique is often more explicit and concentrated. When William Carlos Williams wrote "The Red Wheelbarrow," his famous modernist poem—"so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens"—exemplifies defamiliarization through extreme condensation and the stripping away of conventional poetic diction. The simple image of a wheelbarrow becomes extraordinary through the careful arrangement of words and the deliberate removal of explanatory context, forcing readers to find meaning in the precise visual and sensory details.
Contemporary examples can be found in the work of writers like Virginia Woolf, whose stream-of-consciousness technique systematically disrupts conventional narrative flow to make familiar experiences of time and memory feel newly strange. In her novel "To the Lighthouse," Woolf describes the same scene from multiple perspectives, layering different temporal and psychological dimensions until even ordinary moments become luminous with renewed possibility.
Easier said than done, but still worth knowing.
Scientific or Theoretical Perspective
From a cognitive science perspective, Shklovsky's theory anticipates modern understanding of how attention and perception work. Research in psychology has shown that habitual patterns of thinking create what neuroscientists call "neural pathways"—well-worn routes through the brain that make familiar responses quick and automatic but also tend to filter out important details. When these pathways are disrupted—as they are in art—we activate different neural networks, creating new connections and fresh perceptions Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
The neurological basis for defamiliarization can be understood through the brain's dual-process theory, which distinguishes between System 1 (automatic, fast thinking) and System 2 (deliberate, slow thinking). Plus, art as technique functions by forcing the reader into System 2 processing, requiring conscious effort and attention that breaks through the automatic categorization of System 1. This shift in cognitive mode is what creates the aesthetic experience Shklovsky described.
Linguistically, the technique relates to what scholars call "polysemy"—the capacity of words to have multiple meanings. Worth adding: art exploits this polysemy by using words in ways that activate different semantic networks, creating new combinations of meaning that transcend their conventional usage. This process is closely related to what cognitive linguists term "conceptual blending," where familiar concepts are merged in novel ways to create new meanings.
Common Mistakes or Misunderstandings
A common misunderstanding about Shklovsky's theory is to interpret it as merely advocating for difficult or obscure writing for its own sake. Because of that, while Shklovsky did argue that difficulty is a feature, not a bug, of literary language, he did not mean that art should be incomprehensible or that readers should struggle pointlessly. The difficulty serves the purpose of renewing perception, not creating frustration.
Another misconception is to view defamiliarization as simply using unusual vocabulary or complex sentence structures. While these can be tools for defamiliarization, the technique is more fundamentally about disrupting automatic perception patterns, which can be achieved through various means including narrative structure, point of view, temporal organization, and even the deliberate omission of expected information That's the whole idea..
Some critics have also misunderstood Shklovsky's emphasis on technique as reducing literature to a mechanical process, ignoring the complex relationship between form and content that he was actually exploring. The "technique" in "art as technique" refers not to formulaic procedures but to the specific ways in which language and narrative devices create effects that transcend their literal meaning.
FAQs
Q: How does Shklovsky's concept differ from other literary theories? A: Unlike structuralist approaches that focus on underlying patterns and systems, or psychoanalytic criticism that emphasizes unconscious drives, Shklovsky's formalist approach focuses specifically on the immediate effects of language and narrative technique on perception. Where other theories might ask what a text means or why it was written, Shklovsky asks how it works to create aesthetic experience.
Q: Can visual art employ the same technique? A: Absolutely.
