| Instructor: Philip Holden, Associate Professor, English Language and Literature,
NUS |
Week 9 (1): Defamiliarisation
Read the following texts:
Lodge, "Defamilarisation" J.M. Coetzee, from Waiting for the Barbarians
Victor Shlovsky, "Art as Technique" [Note that Shlovsky's essay begins with a discussion of imagery in poetry. This is interesting in itself, but I'm particularly interested in his later discussion of "habitual perception." If you're pushed for time, skim the first few pages, and focus your attention in reading from the paragraph beginning "We must, then, speak ..." at the bottom of page 19. Shlovsky's more or less finished with defamiliarization by the time you get to the paragraph beginning "In studying..." on page 27. Try not to get too distracted by all the discussion of sex!].
Preparatory Questions
Defamiliarization, or the related term "denaturalization," is a concept that has been used by a number of critics and theorists to explain the function of a literary text within a society or a reading community. As Lodge explains, texts have the power to take a situation which we take for granted, which has been "naturalised," and place it in a different context which makes us, as readers, see it from a new angle.
The extract from Waiting for the Barbarians is, like Gordimer's "Town and Country Lovers," written by a white South African writer who at the time was living under apartheid, and protested strongly against apartheid's injustices. Many critics have seen Coetzee's writing as being as directly related to social issues as Gordimer's, but in a different way.
For this class meeting, then, post a reply to any one of the following questions on the IVLE discussion group.
1. What observations can you make about the use of filter and narrator in the extract we have, and how does this influence the way in which we perceive the events of the story?
2. What specific connections or parallels can you make between the fantasy world of Waiting for the Barbarians and the real world of South Africa under apartheid in which Coetzee lived?
3. How successfully do you think Gordimer's and Coetzee's very different strategies in writing about the injustices of apartheid work on an audience? Which of the two different approaches is, do you think, the most successful?
4. Take any brief incident in the extract we have and retell it using a different narrator. What new effect is created, and why do you think Coetzee so rigorously excludes other voices and other filters apart from his chosen narrator's?
5. Can you make any connections between the notion of "defamiliarization" expressed in the two critical articles and the way Coetzee is addressing the issue of apartheid?
6. What similarities can you see between Shlovsky's notion of "denaturalization" and Brecht's concept of "alienation"? What, do you think, are the differences between the two concepts?
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