The concept of estrangement\u2014sometimes also translated as \u201calienation effect\u201d\u2014comes from Bertolt Brecht\u2019s modernist essay of Marxist aesthetics titled \u201cA Short Organum for the Theatre\u201d (1948). In this essay, Brecht offers a manifesto-like description of what theater must be in order to be properly political. Brecht urges his reader to depart from \u201cAristotelian\u201d conventions of mimesis, empathy, and realistic narrative. Such representational techniques, he warns, present \u201cthe structures of society (represented on the stage) as incapable of being influenced by society (in the auditorium).\u201d This is because realist\u00a0aesthetics facilitate individualized complacency for Brecht–when watching a film or play, members of the collective audience (or society) are isolated by the activity\u00a0of their \u201cprivate imaginations.\u201d As a result, spectators become preoccupied with the events of the narrative and the feeling of identification, rather than questioning the contours of reality they are presented with.<\/p>\n
Rejecting realist aesthetics and passive consumption, Brecht argues that art should disrupt our sense of reality and inspire collective action. Art, he contends, should produce a critical attitude rather than an empathetic one. He demands that the spectator not fall into the story-world presented on stage, but rather be awakened as she actively makes sense (meaning and perception) of disrupted \u201creality.\u201d Brecht develops his method of\u00a0estrangement in the service of such awakening. According to the project of estrangement, works of art should pry open a sort of gap between \u201creality\u201d and representation, thus revealing all reality as (ideological) representation. This may be achieved formally through the use of vacant expression, vague gestures, awkward embodiments of emotion (whether melodramatic or detached), arbitrary and contingent plot, unnatural scenery, and poor acting. Presented with such disruptive aesthetics, viewers are denied the resolve and comfort of leisurely consumption; they are prompted to feel closed out by reality or struggle for a place within it, actively world-building in the process. Ultimately, for Brecht, the semi-autonomous space of the stage (and art more generally) serves as a key place to practice our revolutionary, world-building power.<\/p>\n
Several Marxist investments run through Brecht’s formal aesthetics.\u00a0 The theoretical practice of estrangement intentionally mirrors and re-doubles the constituent alienation faced by the working classes, both by alienating the viewers during the spectatorial experience, and by showing the viewers images of their own alienation. As a result, Brechtian spectatorship becomes an active process of dis-identification rather than interpellation into dominant power systems. It is in this active dis-identification–rather than empathy or identification–that art finds a politics \u201cfit for the times\u201d of post-WWII capitalism.<\/p>\n
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The concept of estrangement\u2014sometimes also translated as \u201calienation effect\u201d\u2014comes from Bertolt Brecht\u2019s modernist essay of Marxist aesthetics titled \u201cA Short Organum for the Theatre\u201d (1948). In this essay, Brecht offers a manifesto-like description of what theater must be in order to be properly political. Brecht urges his reader to depart from \u201cAristotelian\u201d conventions of mimesis, … <\/p>\n