Intro
Let's take another stab at "defamiliarization." This time let's take a gander at a poem called "Portrait in Georgia" and at a human body that stays, well, human (you know, as opposed to bug).
Jean Toomer was an African-American poet who lived at the turn of the twentieth century in Georgia. He wrote a book called Cane, which is a collection of poems and prose-poems that gives a picture of African-American life in the south during the time of the Jim Crow laws, which lasted from 1876 to 1965 (though he wrote the book in 1923). Here's one of the poems from that very volume.
Quote
Portrait in Georgia
Hair—braided chestnut,
coiled like a lyncher's rope,
Eyes—fagots,
Lips—old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath—the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
of black flesh after flame.
Analysis
Who's the fair damsel being described in this poem? Well, "fair" is a start—this is narrated by an African-American describing a white woman that he's attracted to. The key is, he's black, she's white. Which, in the Jim Crow south, was a recipe for trouble. Not only were interracial relationships were banned—African-American men caught so much as looking at a white woman "inappropriately" could easily end up lynched or murdered. Which happened a lot in those days—that's how deep the legacy of slavery still affected people of all races.
Now that we have all this useful context (uh-oh, isn't that the opposite of Formalism?), let's use Formalism to dig into the deeper meaning of the poem. Essentially, Toomer is using defamiliarization here to wake up his readers to the violence of interracial sexual desire and sexual relationships in the Jim Crow south. For example, the narrator likes the woman's hair—but it reminds him of the rope that will hang around his neck if he tries to touch that hair. He likes her eyes—but they remind him of the fagots (a bundle of sticks) that would be used to light a fire to burn him. Quite the catch-22, huh?
Basically, an African-American guy couldn't so much as admire a white woman without imagining his own violent death. Which is exactly what the speaker of this poem is doing.
So the white woman's beauty is completely defamiliarized here. All of her features make the speaker of the poem—and us readers—think of death and violence. In this way Toomer is making us view a beautiful woman in a completely new—and totally disturbing and deep about the ingrained problems of racism—way. Defamiliarization, anyone?