defamiliarizing


But how describe the world seen without a self?

Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Print.

Lay the head down, or better still, face away from what you look at, and bend with straddled legs till you see your world upside down.

How new it has become! From close-by sprigs of heather to the most distant fold of the land, each detail stands erect in its own validity. In no other way have I seen of my own unaided sight that the earth is round. As I watch, it archies its back, and each layer of landscape bristles – though ‘bristles’ is a word of too much commotion for it. Details are no longer part of a grouping in a picture of which I am the focal point, the focal point is everywhere. Nothing has reference to me, the looker. This is how the earth must see itself.

Shepherd, Nan. The Living mountain. [1977] Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2011. Print.