BRECHT’S ALIENATION-EFFECT AND ITS THEATRICAL POTENCY: A critique of Brecht’s Alienation technique with Shakespearean Parallels

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohit Majumdar
Keyword(s):  
Alienation Effect

Silhouettes analysis: a posthuman method for visualizing and examining the material world

2021 ◽  
pp. 146879412199901
Author(s):  
Grit Höppner
Keyword(s):  
Image Analysis ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Material World ◽  
Agential Realism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alienation Effect ◽  
Classical Image ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Image Details

In recent decades, postmodern, poststructuralist, and social constructivist theories, and the methodologies and methods they have informed, have been criticized for focusing primarily on human actors, discourses, and actions. Simultaneously, so-called posthuman theories have been developed that decentralize the human, reject an unquestioned use of the dualism of human/nonhuman, and emphasize the importance of the material world in the production of the social. A key concern for current qualitative inquiry is to develop methods that contribute to the critique of human-centered analysis. In this article, I explore what we learn about the material world when we do not use verbal methods or written data but image details of moveable formations, which are made into silhouettes using Karen Barad’s agential realism. After introducing posthuman methodology I perform a silhouettes analysis focusing on old age. The intention is to demonstrate that silhouettes analysis makes it possible to gain new insights into the features of materialities of old age in a way that classical image analysis would not allow. In addition, silhouettes analysis produces an alienation effect that disturbs practiced viewing habits and assumptions, and can thus serve as a research tool promoting reflection. I conclude with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of silhouettes analysis for gerontological and posthuman research.

Shklovsky, Viktor (1893–1984)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angeliki Spiropoulou
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Study ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Vladimir Mayakovsky ◽  
Russian Formalism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Epic Theater ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Alienation Effect

Born in St Petersburg, Russia, Victor Borisovich Shklovsky (or Shklovskii; Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский) was a literary critic, autobiographical novelist, and a leading figure of Russian Formalism (1910–30). A charter founder of OPOYAZ (The Society for the Study of Poetic Language, 1917), he was also associated with the Moscow Linguistic Circle, and contemporary avant-garde writers, such as the Serapion Brothers and the Russian Futurists, especially the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930), all of whom similarly emphasized literature as language against the moralizing idealism of Symbolist poetics and Impressionist criticism prevalent in pre-Revolution Russia. However, Formalism was later attacked as "decadent" aestheticism, and Shklovsky was forced to compromise. In his much quoted essay "Art as Device" (1917), a "manifesto of the Formalist method" (Eichenbaum 1965: 113), Shklovsky posits the autonomy of literature and affirms the Formalist pursuit of the immanent, scientific study of the "literariness" of literature derived from its distinctive language and techniques instead of its content, resonating with modernist aesthetics. Here he develops the concept of "estrangement" or "defamiliarization" ( ostraneniye ) as both the aim and method of all art, self-reflexively impeding the automatism of our perception. Renamed as the "alienation effect" or "distancing effect" (Verfremdungseffekt) and endowed with a political function, "estrangement" became the foundational technique of Bertolt Brecht‘s epic theater.

scholarly journals BRECHT’S THEATER: GENRE DIVERSITY AND BASIC CONCEPTS

2021 ◽  
pp. 196-204
Author(s):  
Larysa Fedorenko
Keyword(s):  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Homogeneous System ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Matching Method ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Alienation Effect ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Core

The article is devoted to the drama of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), the peculiarities of its genre palette and analysis of the main factors of the playwright's artistic method. To achieve this goal, the following research methods were used: descriptive; matching method; literary analysis and synthesis. The Brecht Theater is represented by genre varieties of theatrical forms: expressionist drama, musical, opera, operetta, Lehrstück, epic and dialectic theater. The article proves that dialectics is the ideological soil and the conceptual core of the Brecht Theater. The dialectic poetics of a playwright should be understood as the method of analysis and argumentation presented by the Hegelian triad: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. In accordance with the dialectical concept, the Brecht theater puts in the center primarily the principle of contradiction, aimed at a multifaceted understanding of phenomena, overcoming a frozen, ossified way of thinking. The study defines the key concepts and principles of creating the drama of Bertolt Brecht, namely the «alienation effect» (Verfremdungseffekt) and assemblage (composition). The principle of the «alienation effect» is that a familiar phenomenon appears in the theater from an unexpected perspective, and therefore requires awareness of the viewer’s novelty. The means of this is the constant violation of theatrical illusion, the reality of what is happening on stage. The assemblage stipulates that the theatrical action is not a homogeneous system, but is a «made», «constructed» plane of various heterogeneous «materials»: dialogical discourse is interrupted by lyro-epic components (songs); in the musical plan, which is designed in the same style, jazz elements are suddenly «mounted», actors exchange roles during the performance, elements of the cinema «penetrate» the event plane, the causal course of the events depicted is interrupted by the demonstration of banners or posters with provocative appeals. The prospects for further research are the literary analysis of post-Brecht theater, that is, drama, which appeared as an imitation or negation of the dramatic principles of Brecht's theater.

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