| 英文摘要 |
The study analyzes a selection of poems written by contemporary Arab American authors Naomi Shihab Nye, Suheir Hammad, and Laila Halaby in light of the Russian formalist concept of ostranenie (defamiliarization) to argue that contemporary Arab American poets deploy defamiliarizing techniques not as a means to escape their reality of displacement, discrimination, and in-betweenness, but as a means to stay connected with this reality in an attempt to change it. Viktor Shklovsky’s view of art as a defamiliarizing medium through which the lost“sensation of life”(1) is recovered describes the process of aesthetic perception as a process of aesthetic disturbance through which the recipient’s habitual understanding of reality is deautomatized (disturbed). This affirms the rootedness of art in the reality which it seeks to make new and its viability as a means of resistance, especially in the works of silenced and marginalized groups in society. Estranging readers from the familiar perspectives through which negative representations of Arabs have been ingrained into their minds helps the poets understudy to disrupt their readers’expectations, foster their critical thinking to perceive a reality of displacement and discrimination Americans of Arab descent are living from a new perspective freed from Western bias against Arabs. Defamiliarizing techniques such as the use of detailed sensory descriptions, unconventional structures, and changing points of view are highlighted in the selected poems with the aim of explaining how these literary techniques help Arab American poets create a counterdiscourse through which common Western assumptions and stereotypes popularized about Arabs in the mainstream discourse can be resisted and subverted. |
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