Mastodawn

Today's the 7th🎂of my article exploring the subversive potential of #Tolstoyan #defamiliarisation. Freely available here: https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_subversive_potential_of_Leo_Tolstoy_s_defamiliarisation_a_case_study_in_drawing_on_the_imagination_to_denounce_violence/9468479

Short thread summary: T is primary example of master of
#literary technique of ‘ #defamiliarisation ’ (looking at the familiar as if new) to shake readers into recognising absurdity of common views & practices.

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Alexandre Christoyannopoulos Jan 11, 2025

Today's the 6th 🎂 of my article exploring the subversive potential of #Tolstoyan #defamiliarisation. Freely available here: https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_subversive_potential_of_Leo_Tolstoy_s_defamiliarisation_a_case_study_in_drawing_on_the_imagination_to_denounce_violence/9468479

Short thread summary: 1/ T is primary example of master of #literary technique of ‘#defamiliarisation’ (looking at the familiar as if new) to shake readers into recognising absurdity of common views & practices

The subversive potential of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘defamiliarisation’: a case study in drawing on the imagination to denounce violence

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated denunciations of all political violence, whether by dissidents or ostensibly legitimate states. If these writings have inspired many later pacifists and anarchists, it is partly thanks to his masterful deployment of the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ – or looking at the familiar as if new – to shake readers into recognising the absurdity of common justifications of violence, admitting their implicit complicity in it, and noticing the process which numbed them into accepting such complicity. This paper discusses Tolstoy’s use of the imagination to defamiliarise and denounce violence, first by citing a number of typical examples, then by reflecting on four of its subversive characteristics: its disruption of automated perception, its implicit concession of some recognition, its corrosion of conventional respect for traditional hierarchies, and its encouragement of empathy.

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the roamer Jun 30, 2024

@composergreg

This piece keeps me thinking. I got Arved Ashby's book from the library. A real find.

Ashby on Gould: "An imaginative mind taking an example of common-practice music and teasing out its textual possibilities to extremes, risking incursions into the bizarre and the arbitrary, and testing the various prospects for coherent musical wholes that may or may not have anything to do with the composer’s thinking."

#GlennGould #improvisation #performance #defamiliarisation #ArvedAshby

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the roamer Jun 29, 2024

@composergreg

Oh, this is illuminating. A "compositional approach to performance" as dual to "improvisational composition" makes perfect sense for Gould. And as you suggest, Gould stays true to the material, no self-indulgence.

I am not a musician myself, but as a lecturer I experience a similar tension: the exposition must be free and created afresh in front of the students, and yet it must remain true to the canon.

#GlenGould #Shklovsky #improvisation #defamiliarisation #lecturing

the roamer Jun 2, 2024

"Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony."

Art as Technique (1917),
Viktor Shklovsky

"To make the stone stony" --- Shklovsky speaks about literature and the characteristic difference between poetry and prose. But for me, "to make the stone stony" is also the battle cry of good teaching. Let the student experience the stone, for the first time.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/first/en122/lecturelist-2015-16-2/shklovsky.pdf

#Shklovsky #defamiliarisation #pedagogy

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos Jan 11, 2024

Today's the 5th🎂of my article exploring the subversive potential of #Tolstoyan #defamiliarisation. Freely available here: https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_subversive_potential_of_Leo_Tolstoy_s_defamiliarisation_a_case_study_in_drawing_on_the_imagination_to_denounce_violence/9468479

Short thread summary: T is primary example of master of #literary technique of ‘#defamiliarisation’ (looking at the familiar as if new) to shake readers into recognising absurdity of common views & practices

The subversive potential of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘defamiliarisation’: a case study in drawing on the imagination to denounce violence

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated denunciations of all political violence, whether by dissidents or ostensibly legitimate states. If these writings have inspired many later pacifists and anarchists, it is partly thanks to his masterful deployment of the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ – or looking at the familiar as if new – to shake readers into recognising the absurdity of common justifications of violence, admitting their implicit complicity in it, and noticing the process which numbed them into accepting such complicity. This paper discusses Tolstoy’s use of the imagination to defamiliarise and denounce violence, first by citing a number of typical examples, then by reflecting on four of its subversive characteristics: its disruption of automated perception, its implicit concession of some recognition, its corrosion of conventional respect for traditional hierarchies, and its encouragement of empathy.

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the roamer May 23, 2023

@chashale

Lately I've become obsessed with the concept of #defamiliarisation by literary theorist Viktor #Shklovsky. Make the familiar become unfamiliar, understand a thing by making it strange. Once you recognise the principle, you see it at work everywhere. So in this photograph!

#Feininger was important to me when I started snapping as a young man. His handbook was my guide for many years, his photographs served as the standard. I now see that they are exercises in defamiliarisation.

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the roamer May 18, 2023

@Alan

Lots of wisdom in your post. About #humour, human #authorship, the unordinariness of the #ordinary.

"When the ordinary stops being ordinary" --- to me as a teacher, that experience is also the key to a meaningful teaching moment.

#Shklovsky and the notion of #defamiliarisation come to mind.

Defamiliarisation as the haven for authentic human authorship!

#OrdinaryNoMore

Alex Christoyannopoulos Jan 11, 2023

Today's the 4th🎂of my article exploring the subversive potential of #Tolstoyan #defamiliarisation. Freely available here: https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_subversive_potential_of_Leo_Tolstoy_s_defamiliarisation_a_case_study_in_drawing_on_the_imagination_to_denounce_violence/9468479.

Short summary: T is primary example of master of #literary technique of ‘#defamiliarisation’ (looking at the familiar as if new) to shake readers into recognising absurdity of common views & practices

Article focuses on T’s #defamiliarization of common justifications of #violence (with examples), encouraging readers to admit their implicit #complicity & noticing process which numbed them into accepting such complicity

Then reflects on 4 specific #subversive characteristics of defam: #disruption of automated perception, implicit #concession of problem, corrosion of respect for traditional #hierarchies, & encouragement of #empathy

The subversive potential of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘defamiliarisation’: a case study in drawing on the imagination to denounce violence

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated denunciations of all political violence, whether by dissidents or ostensibly legitimate states. If these writings have inspired many later pacifists and anarchists, it is partly thanks to his masterful deployment of the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ – or looking at the familiar as if new – to shake readers into recognising the absurdity of common justifications of violence, admitting their implicit complicity in it, and noticing the process which numbed them into accepting such complicity. This paper discusses Tolstoy’s use of the imagination to defamiliarise and denounce violence, first by citing a number of typical examples, then by reflecting on four of its subversive characteristics: its disruption of automated perception, its implicit concession of some recognition, its corrosion of conventional respect for traditional hierarchies, and its encouragement of empathy.

figshare