Alienation (Entfremdung) and Strangeness (Fremdheit): two Western cultural paradigms

Abstract

Alienation and strangeness could be understood as markers of cultural paradigms. The first term is related to modernity as the second is to postmodernity. One stands for identity, the other for alterity. While the existence of the phenomenon of alienation becomes disputable, the discourse of strangeness becomes intensified in the European academic sphere. In a way, the discourse of strangeness is labeled by a cultural critic, which tries to justify "strange" for centuries dispelled by the European culture. Meanwhile, a phenomenology of alienation is developed to re-structure the term. Both phenomena are connected insofar as alienation can be understood as a temporary moment of strangeness. Both theories turned out to be productive in literary analysis.