The affective allure – a phenomenological dialogue with David Miall’s studies of foregrounding and feeling

Abstract This paper attempts to rescue the notion of foregrounding from the prevailing focus on defamiliarization. It does so by engaging in a phenomenological dialogue with David Miall’s account of foregrounding and feeling and Viktor Shklovsky’s discussion of literary device and aesthetic function. In particular, it contextualizes Miall’s proposal of the response to foregrounding as a feeling-guided process involving boundary crossings, a defamiliarization-refamiliarization cycle, and self-transformative feelings within Husserl’s philosophical analysis of sense constitution. Miall’s feeling explorations and explications find their counterpart in Husserl’s active egoic turning toward the affective allure and enticement of affective resonances. Using Miall’s work as a touchstone, some frequently overlooked aspects of Shklovsky’s conception of ostranenie are clarified by drawing on Husserl’s notions of the natural attitude, active and passive synthesis, affective allure, expressive explication, and awakenings.