Effect Of Estrangement Research Articles

Could commodities themselves speak? An introduction to the agnotology of the spectacle

This article introduces the ‘agnotology of spectacle'. While agnotology is a relatively recent term used to describe the production and use of ignorance, we argue that Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1992) is an early attempt to outline a global field of disinformation and secrecy. For Debord, such secrecy is required to maintain the political and moral authority of what he defined as ‘spectacle', namely the images used by states and corporations to mediate relations of power with consumers and citizens. We consider how the spectacle creates fields of disinformation and secrecy to maintain its political and moral authority by examining notes in commodities that purport to be calls for help from coerced labourers in China. These notes allow us to assess the uncanny experience of consuming goods manufactured across global supply chains which may well comprise of serious labour exploitation. However, these sources also demand a more expansive agnotology than that provided by Debord: one that engages with labour processes, contracts and race. We therefore develop Debord's ideas by examining the work of Mills and Benaji. Finally, drawing on Brecht's concept of the 'estrangement effect', we discuss how exploited workers can co-opt the aesthetics of the uncanny to articulate their subject position within a global agnotological field.

Digital video as a way of evaluating learning in Mathematics

The aim of this article is to reflect on the potential of producing and using digital videos with mathematics content in the process of assessing school learning. To do so, we bring the analysis of three videos entered in a festival and the speeches of their producers in a questionnaire and a group interview. It deals with an excerpt from an Art-Based Educational Investigation, which adopted A/r/tography as a qualitative research methodology and, as a theoretical reference, the notions of Human-Beings-With-Media were used as a knowledge producing unit, Art as an aesthetic experience and the estrangement effect of the Didactic Theater Theory. As a result, similarities were observed, in the didactic functions, between theater, cinema and the analyzed videos, such as the interdisciplinarity of contents, the multimodality of languages and humor, culminating in the idea of using videos as a form of evaluation.

Francesco Aloe’s Climate Fiction: Ruins, Bodies and Memories from the Future in "L’ultima bambina d’Europa"

L’ultima bambina d’Europa (The Last Girl of Europe), written by Francesco Aloe, is a captivating example of Italian cli-fi. Inspired by Pulitzer-prizewinning American novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, L’ultima bambina d’Europa narrates the story of a young Italian family traveling southbound in an exhausting voyage toward Africa; presumably, there the sun is still visible, the wind is softly blowing, and water and food supplies have not run out, at least, not yet. In this article, I will analyze some of the main cli-fi topoi and I will connect them to the narrative and rhetorical construction employed by the author. Specifically, I will focus on the effect of estrangement, which will encourage readers to embrace a less anthropocentric gaze. Through the perspective of the main protagonists - mother, father and their daughter Sofia - readers will become aware of the gluttonous nature of capitalism that functions only for a few. In their voyage, these three characters traverse a barren and devastated landscape void of temporal and spatial references. However, in this unspecified gloomy future scenario, readers will recognize the ruins of our current society and of our petroculture, heavily influenced by the American model of consumerism. Sofia’s parents, who seem to suffer from “petro-melancholia” (LeMenager, Living Oil 102), recollect nostalgically the petrochemical culture in which they grew up. This is in stark contrast with Sofia’s perspective; she has no recollection of a capitalist society. Finally, this analysis will underline Aloe’s prowess in situating death among the living, the place where it rightfully belongs.

The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual ed. by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers

Reviewed by: The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual ed. by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers Samar Zahrawi (bio) Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers (eds). The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xxi + 233. $99.99 hardback, $80.00 ebook. The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous is the first book in the English language to paint a well-rounded picture of the dramatic art, intellectual background, and theatrical impact of the most significant modern Arab dramatist, Sa’dallah Wannous (1941–97). Generally speaking, the book first situates Wannous within Syrian, Arab, and world contexts and analyzes Wannous’ use of Brechtian techniques to induce critical thinking and promote social and political change. Second, it provides a reading into the thematic content of Wannous’ drama caused by his frustration with the multiple political failures of his time. Third, it delves into the directors’ theatrical experience while staging Wannous’s plays. Fourth, it profiles Wannous the intellectual, the man, and the father through surveying his library and recording memoirs about him by two of his close friends and daughter. Editors Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers have adeptly brought together the work of multidisciplinary experts, including literary scholars, directors, creative writers, and close acquaintances. The resulting volume will appeal to scholars in the field of theatre, literature, culture, and the relation of authority to social change. It will also be of value to anyone interested in contemporary Syria and the Arab world. The book is unique in critiquing Wannous’ theatre and thought and tracing the organic connection between political, social, historical, and personal factors that contributed to Wannous’s creativity. It studies the role of Wannous’s theatre in envisioning and impacting culture during postcolonial and contemporary Syria and adjacent countries. It also registers changes in societies and measures the extent to which theatre and literature still matter today Locating the work of Wannous within the theatrical movement in the Arab world and world theatre, this book allows readers to define the disciplines and modes of thought in a new way. It identifies the post-colonial struggle with authoritarianism and the political events that influenced Wannous such as the partition of Palestinian Land upon the creation of the State of Israel (Nakba), the loss of more land to Israel due to the war of June 5th 1967 (Naksa), the Camp David Accords (Egypt and Israel peace treaty in 1978), and the continuous struggle for peace and political equity. In “Part 1 - Situating Wannous,” Marvin Carlson surveys the history of the Arabic world since the Arabic renaissance (Nahda) in Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut, starting with Marun al-Naqqash and Abu-Khalil al-Qabbani and moving up to Wannous’s time. Carlson studies the influence of European [End Page 336] theatre practitioners on Wannous and his inclination to favor Brecht’s methods over Ionesco’s, at the same time drawing from folkloric tradition to develop a genuinely Arab theatre. He also considers Wannous as a major author not just in the modern Arab world but in the theatre repertoire around the world. Robert Myers and Nada Saab study, in more detail, the influence of Bertolt Brecht and other Brechtian practitioners on Wannous, as well as Wannous’ innovative use of Arabic traditional modes while adapting Brechtian techniques. Myers and Saab investigate the way Wannous used Brechtian techniques in his Theatre of Politicization such as estrangement effect, frequent use of metatheatre, the use of narrations, and characterization through class and profession as opposed to the creation of character through psychological development. They also point to Wannous’ break away from the direct influence of Brecht and Marx in the later plays of the 1990s, when he drew upon Chekhov, Shakespeare, Sufi rituals, and other sources of inspiration. “Part 2 - Reading Wannous” studies the significance of Wannous’ best-known and most-produced plays about politics, history, and theories of theatre. Zeina Halabi provides a post-structural study of Wannous’ ten-year silence that came as a reaction to multiple political and personal catastrophes culminating in the Camp David peace treaty accord between...

Gestus and Taboo: A Study of Bertolt Brecht

The paper addresses Brecht’s concept of Gestus and proposes an original reading of it, parallel to Roland Barthes’s semiological theory. It proposes the view that a gesture becomes a Gestus when it is interpellated into myth. It follows that the Gestus also interpellates into relations, which is, at the same time, its connecting and disconnecting power. The author presents some insights from the theory of ritual and unpacks them to identify some of the ritual’s key characteristics that simultaneously correspond to Brecht’s epic theatre. He does this with an awareness of the ontological differences between ritual and theatre and without the intention of locating Brechtian theatre at any specific locus in the ritual-theatre relation. He intends to think about this relation so that it reveals further insights into the conceptual and practical nature of Brecht’s estrangement effect. Finally, the author recognises its experimental and pedagogical power in its persistent, repetitive intervention in social myths and taboos, which is not only a matter of method but also a matter of initiating in and practising a specific ontology.

Climate Change: Eco-Dystopia in Antonio Scurati’s La seconda mezzanotte

This article offers an examination of the novel La seconda mezzanotte (2011) by Antonio Scurati. Classified by the author as a catastrophist sci-fi novel, this work is here defined and analyzed as one of the very first Italian examples of climate fiction (cli-fi), a narrative form especially popular in North America, closely related to anthropogenic climate change. The essay discusses some of the topoi that characterize Anglo-Saxon cli-fi, which are clearly present in The Second Midnight. Such recurring motifs will also be discussed, in particular, by highlighting some of the rhetorical tools adopted by Scurati, such as, for example, the effect of estrangement. Through such effects, the reader is spurred to adopt an uncomfortable, “oblique” and unusual gaze. This study highlights Antonio Scurati’s skill and originality in dealing with the causes and global effects of climate change. The author succeeds in making the reader perceive the spatial and temporal magnitude of global warming, which in 2072 Venice materializes dramatically in a Big Wave. The Second Midnight is a human comedy that expands across centuries and continents while narrating the events of a few men living in Nova Venezia in a specific year, 2092. Distant spaces, remote times, human and non-human corporealities converge in a new Venice, which is a piece of a hologram narrating other people’s stories.

Terminology of Theatre: Objectives and Methods of Research

The paper summarizes the practical experience and observations ofthe author that were accumulated in the process of decades-long research of theterminology of theatre and assembling the theatre terminology dictionaries.From the theoretical viewpoint, it is an attempt to implement the ideas of«uncovering the language» and its inherent social phenomena. This ideasimultaneously emerged in the minds of the two most influential authors of thetwentieth century—Ludwig Wittgenstein (language games) and Bertolt Brecht(Verfremdungseffekt, an estrangement effect). Each of them uses these ideas toaddress different tasks—theoretical and artistic ones—nevertheless, they havethe same aim (despite varying fields of application). That is, determining thevalue of language (objectivity and potential risks of manipulation), i. e. the termsand systems of terms, on the basis of which theatre studies (or, in a broaderscope, art studies and some part of the humanities) solve its tasks.

Aestheticizing Violence: Paul Bowles’ Prolific Partnership with His Motiveless Villain in The Delicate Prey

Many critics have regarded the violence in Bowles as “meaningless” or “motiveless.” By defining the connection between motive and act, this article tackles the indefinite nature of violence in Paul Bowles’ collection of short stories, The Delicate Prey. To this end, a study of the typical Arab character in Bowles is offered. Also, the motive behind Bowles’ villain is defined in the light of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s term “motiveless malignity.” It is discussed that the contextless violence of Bowles has an estrangement effect on the victim; and his detached narration technique, together with the excessive occurrences of violence, leads to an aesthetic experience on the reader. “Aesthetic experience” is explained based on Slobodan Markovi?’s definition of the term. It is concluded that Bowles’ maneuvers over the subject of violence should be viewed in the light of a modernist aesthetic tradition based on violence rather than praxeological humanistic chain reactions.

Estrangement, epochē, and performance: Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt and a phenomenology of spectatorship

During his period of exile in Scandinavia, Bertolt Brecht wrote “I don’t think the traditional form of theatre means anything any longer. Its significance is purely historic; it can illuminate the way in which earlier ages regarded human relationships […] [but] a modern spectator can’t learn anything from themz” (Brecht in Brecht on theatre: the development of an aesthetic. Trans. John Willett., Eyre Methuen Publishing, London, p. 66, 1964). To create a modern theatre fit for a modern audience, Brecht holds that not only would the content of plays have to change, but the experience of theatrical spectatorship itself. To fully capture how Brecht’s work differs from that of previous playwrights, a close analysis of spectatorial experience and perception is required. In this paper, I compare the aesthetic techniques used in Brecht’s epic theatre to the genetic phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Reading Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (or estrangement effect) through a Husserlian lens, I argue that Brecht mobilizes phenomenological methodology in order to suspend the audience’s preconceived notions of theatre and to cultivate self-conscious, critically aware, and socially motivated spectatorship. Just as Husserl describes phenomenology as a presuppositionless science, so too does Brecht offer epic theatre as a way to free “[…] socially-conditioned phenomena from the stamp of familiarity” (Brecht 1964, p. 192).

The Estrangement Effect in Three Holocaust Narratives: Defamiliarising Victims, Perpetrators and the Fairy-Tale Genre

Holocaust literature has often been described as producing disruption and estrangement. As the Holocaust challenges traditional forms of expression, writers have used alternative techniques, sometimes blurring genres and registers. This is the case with Holocaust narratives that rewrite fairy tales or use fairy-tale motifs and structures: they produce an estrangement effect in that their intertexts are defamiliarised as a strategy for opening up the possibilities of representation. This article focuses on three works of this kind, by authors Lisa Goldstein, Louise Murphy and Rachel Seiffert. Specifically, it considers how they constitute an alternative to the sanctioned metanarrative of the Holocaust, which is victim centred and facilitates the reader’s empathy. Indeed, the works discussed here complicate the categories of victim and perpetrator, thus problematising our engagement with the characters in a way that furthers the abovementioned estrangement effect. Attention is paid to the role played by secrecy in each narrative, as I contend that it is the secret and its effects in the diegesis that keep the characters at a distance, “estranged” from the reader. This distance precludes easy identification and invites critical discussion on the limitations of familiar categories and binaries, such as the victim/victimiser opposition and the public/secret dichotomy.

The War of the Roses dir. by Kimura Ryunosuke

Reviewed by: The War of the Rosesdir. by Kimura Ryunosuke Kitamura Sae The War of the RosesPresented at Theater Fushikaden, Tokyo, Japan. 07 25– 08 12, 2019. Directed by Kimura Ryunosuke. Stage management by Watanabe Yuta. Music by Yuji Rerure Kawaguchi, Tsuruzawa Kanya, and Tsuruzawa Tsugahana. Sound by Ozono Koji. Set design by Norimine Masahiro. Lighting by Ito Takashi. Translation by Matsuoka Kazuko. With Kochi Yamato (Exeter/Charles/Talbot/Suffolk/Richard III), Maimi (Margaret/Richmond/Anne/Young Duke of York/others), Iwasaki Mark Yudai (Rose/Edward IV/Shakespeare/others), Suzuki Akinori (Henry VI/Alençon/Clarence/2 ndDuke of Buckingham/others), Miyamoto Yuko (Eleanor/Queen Elizabeth), Osanai Erika (Joan/Duchess of York/others), Otsuka Kojiro (Duke of York/Rivers/others), and others. Kakushinhan, a company based in Tokyo, performed its first production in 2012 and has specialized in Shakespearean theater ever since. Kimura Ryunosuke, the company's director, directed the War of the Rosescycle, its four-part six-hour version of the Henry VIand Richard IIIplays, with Kakushinhan at Theater Fushikaden from May 6–31, 2016. This production was a fringe hit; Fushikaden can house approximately 100 spectators, and approximately 2700 people saw this production, although perhaps many saw only the last part ( Richard III). Three years after the first attempt, Kimura Ryunosuke and Kakushinhan restaged The War of the Rosesat the same theater with the same leading actors. With a running time of over seven hours (approximately 4.5 hours for Henry VIand 2.5 hours for Richard III), this was not a revival but a new production. As with Simon Godwin, who directed two different but equally satisfying versions of Hamletfor the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2016 and for the Bunkamura Theater Cocoon in 2019 (reviewed in SB37.4), Kimura is accomplished at exploring the same plays in different directions over relatively short intervals of time, and audience members are sometimes surprised by the amount of experimentation evident in both directors' latter productions. Since its launch, Kakushinhan's primary aim has always been to make Shakespeare more relatable to a modern Japanese audience. The 2019 production of The War of the Rosestried to create post-Ninagawa Japanese-style Shakespeare without ostentatious self-Orientalism. Kakushinhan's "Japan" is raw, energetic, and seamlessly connected to the culturally hybrid, constantly changing twenty-first-century Japanese society in which the audience lives, and it is stylistically different from the carefully crafted, distinctively imaginative "Japan" created by the late Yukio Ninagawa. The set for the 2019 production of The War of the Roseswas a bare, monochrome stage with folding chairs. In Richard III, a white paper curtain was used as a backdrop and torn down during the play. As in previous productions, there was a drum pit below the left side of the stage where Yuji Rerure Kawaguchi provided percussion. In addition to Kawaguchi, Tsuruzawa Kanya and Tsuruzawa Tsugahana, two gidayumusicians, recorded shamisenmusic for the production; gidayuis a genre of traditional Japanese theatrical music, and shamisenis a sitar-like Japanese string instrument. While the drum performance accompanied energetic scenes, shamisenwas used to symbolize Henry VI's quiet inner conflict. Most actors wore modern clothes with hints of historical flavor. Female characters were clad in showy European dresses, while some characters appeared on the stage with modern props, such as a Nike jacket. The [End Page 149]characters belonging to the York faction wore white, those belonging to the Lancaster faction wore red, and the French wore blue, enabling the audience to distinguish between characters by the colors of their clothes. On occasion, actors who played multiple roles had to change their costumes quickly in front of the audience, leading to intentional laughter, which was part of the production's ongoing deployment of the Brechtian estrangement effect during the Henry VIsegments to comment on the absurdity of the war. In the famous rose-picking scene, Iwasaki Mark Yudai, one of the leading actors of the company, played the silent "Rose." In this role, he simply appeared as a rose bush and toyed with a smart-phone, completely disinterested in the intense conversation happening around him. This...

‘What it feels like to be an other’: imaginations of displacement in contemporary speculative fiction

This essay explores how contemporary speculative fiction can offer new ways of imagining the refugee experience. Looking at Omar El Akkad’s American War (2017) and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017), it argues that the cognitive estrangement effect, or the way in which each text encourages the reader to distance themselves from reality, can help the reader build a bridge between the world of the refugee and that of the reader. Central to the discussion will be the genre’s use of the term novum, with reference to concepts of time and space. Not only do these elements contribute to achieving cognitive estrangement, they also have a fundamental role to play in the lives of refugees. Drawing a parallel between the novum as speculative fiction’s most important trope and the role of the real novum in refugee lives shows how the genre reflects the disruptive changes brought about by the displacement of refugee populations. In addition, the flexible use of time in each text has proven to be a useful tool for helping the reader imagine how being a refugee impacts on one’s sense of time and, subsequently, one’s agency—an element which will be explored through an analysis of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus, as well as insights from David Hoy’s reading of Martin Heidegger’s prioritisation of the future. As speculative fiction’s main task is to imagine alternative realities, a third central element of the discussion will be ways in which the genre utilises space. Ultimately, it is argued that refugee narratives do not have to be strictly realist, as fantastical elements help readers to transcend the personal imagination— and sometimes that is what is needed to envisage the unthinkable.

“La mano nella terra”. Spaesamento e redenzione di un “conquistatore conquistato” nel Paraguay del XVI secolo

In her short story “La mano en la tierra” Josefina Pla outlines a “postmodern” portrait of the sixteenth-century hidalgo Don Blas, whose language is initially marked by the difference between Western hegemonic discourse and the subdued and subaltern Otherness of the natives. However, he gradually realizes not only the estrangement effect of his contact with the guarani people, but also a sense of displacement due both to the semantic crisis caused by contamination and his sense of alienation within his own family. Only at the end, thanks to the blue colour of his mestizo son’s eyes, does he recognize himself as a foreigner among foreigners, as half of a world which is completed by the Other, and reach a reconciliation that opens the door to the counter-conquest of future Americans.

The Poetics of Otherness: War, Trauma, and Literature

The Poetics of Otherness: War, Trauma, and Literature

Posthuman Reconstruction of the World as a Simulation in Charles Stross’ Accelerando

In this paper my aim is to analyze the theme of simulation in Charles Stross’ hard science fiction novel titled ‘Accelerando’ (2005). The discussion shall start by pointing out the enormous significance of the ideas of simulation both in the world of pure science as well as in the fields of philosophy, arts and literature. We shall show by adopting an informational approach and by using the theoretical framework of Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ that science fiction novels like Charles Stross’ ‘Accelerando’ treat simulation not just as an abstract mathematical entity existing independently of human beings; rather they treat simulation as an indispensable step for mankind in their journey of ascension to the Posthuman plane of existence. This paper will also try to prove that Stross’ ‘Accelerando’ not only relies upon the description of the effects of use of many incomprehensibly powerful simulation technologies in various forms to produce the effect of estrangement upon the readers but it also implies that the very fabric of reality which deem to be real is composed of binary oppositions between different strands of contradistinctive signs and symbols which in a posthuman world will crumble together to give way to a Posthuman world replete with endless possibilities. This novel like many other contemporary hard science fiction novels implies that the reality is essentially indistinguishable from the simulation once the influence of human perception or consciousness is deducted from the equation and then the entire Universe can be interpreted as one gigantic computational entity consisting of myriads of quantum informational field operators through the manipulation of which we can derive a semblance of power indistinguishable from the actual one.Keywords: Science Fiction, Posthumanism, Simulacra and Simulation, Quantum Nature of Creation, Portrayal of Future

Uma filosofia inquietante da história: sobre Austerlitz, de W. G. Sebald

O ensaio analisa o romance Austerlitz (2001), de W.G. Sebald, com o propósito de identificar os modos de figuração do tempo e da história na referida obra. Argumenta-se que Sebald, com a sua prosa de ritmo lento e caráter digressivo, um tanto antiquada na dicção e no tom narrativo, objetiva produzir efeitos de estranhamento que afetam os modos usuais de experiência do tempo dos leitores do romance. Argumenta-se ainda que as reflexões do personagem principal sobre a temporalidade moderna estão relacionados às considerações de Freud sobre o “inquietante”, e que para Sebald a maneira apropriada de investigar essa dimensão insondável da historicidade seria por meio de uma “metafísica da história”.

ЛІТЕРАТУРНА ТРАДИЦІЯ WEIRD FICTION В АНГЛОМОВНІЙ ЛІТЕРАТУРІ ХХ–ХХІ СТОЛІТТЯ

The article addresses the evolution and transformation of Weird Fiction in Anglophone 20th- and 21st- century literature. The first part is devoted to the question of genre, placing Weird Fiction within the fantastic genre and discussing its defining characteristics in contrast to those of fantasy, science-fiction and the Gothic novel. The second part reviews the three major stages in the development of Weird Fiction: its establishment in the Old Weird tradition of the 1880–1940s; the transformation of the Old Weird model in the 1940–1990s and the making of the New Weird movement in the 1990–2000s. Old Weird is viewed in the paper as a type of atmospheric literature aimed at achieving a single effect of ontological horror and unease on the reader through a short story mode. It is argued that the hallmarks of Old Weird are visionary sensibility and attention to detail despite general disregard for the plot and novel, primarily tentacular, teratology. The transformation of the Old Weird cannon is attributed to the influence of F. Kafka, M. Peake, the New Wave writers and naturalistic horror in the 1940–1990s. Its focal aspects are seen to include a new approach to plot-building (later exemplified in “the surrender to the Weird” principle), a shift from writing short stories to novels, exploration of surreal visionary sensibility and introduction of social and political agenda of the real world into the fictional worlds. The current state of Weird Fiction – New Weird – is defined as an eclectic type of literature which utilizes and subverts the tropes of science-fiction, fantasy, magical realism, surrealism and horror to achieve the estrangement effect necessary to interpret the real world inferences in the weird reality of New Weird fiction.

Putting into question the imaginary of recovery: a dialectical reading of the global financial crisis and its aftermath

In this article, we put into question the discourses that emerged during the global financial crisis (GFC) and that coalesced around a particular socio-economic imaginary of ‘recovery’ over the period 2009–2012. Our reading of these discourses is very much guided by the notion of the dialectic as developed by Fredric Jameson, and as such this paper can be read as an attempt to put his theoretical ideas to work. Through our dialectical reading, we aim to create a certain estrangement effect that makes the imaginary of recovery seem very odd and unnatural. In order to achieve such an effect, we postulate four theses which are deliberately antagonistic: first, there has been no ‘crisis of capitalism’; second, we must change the valence of the GFC from negative to positive; third, the relationship between finance capitalism and ‘free markets’ is deeply contradictory; and fourth, we must resist the regulation discourse.

Waste, Art, and Social Change

Films and documentaries can be highly useful pedagogic and research tools. They take complex topics that are theoretically and empirically rich and distill them into vehicles having the potential to deeply affect the way we look at marketing, consumer behavior, and the natural environment. They illuminate how our current consumption patterns are fundamentally problematic in ways that we rarely register because they are far removed from our sight. Using the work of Zygmunt Bauman on moral distance as well as two recent documentary films that bring the subject of waste to the fore, we explore these and related issues. Trashed (Brady 2012) highlights our planet’s finite resources and the hazards stemming from various waste disposal practices. Waste Land (Walker 2010) draws our attention to excess by profiling an example of how waste can be transformed into art. We make a case that these accounts can contribute to the “estrangement effect” articulated and praised by Herbert Marcuse and concomitantly provide us with examples of Transformative Consumer Research outside of the academy.

Cinema Expressionista Alemão: O Estranho, o Estranhamento e o Efeito de Estranhamento

The analysis of some of the German expressionist films produced in the early twentieth century enables us point to the existence of common and recurring themes such as the voluntary submission of individuals, the mass manipulation by leaders, the split personality, and the double. Although such issues seem to refer, at first, only to the characters’ psychological disorders, Sigfried Kracauer seeks to demonstrate the relationship between the topics covered in expressionist films and Germany’s social reality in the postwar period. In this perspective, the aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between aspects of the individual psychic reality, especially alienation, mental alienation, and estrangement produced by social reality. It puts together the strange (Das Unheimliche) discussed by Freud, the concept of estrangement (Entfremdung) by Marx, and the effect of estrangement in art (Verfremdungseffekt) by Bertolt Brecht, discussed by Herbert Marcuse