ABSTRACT
Following a conceptual summary and identifying the book's limitations, the conclusion returns to the practical question of social defamiliarization. While the methodological and theoretical benefits are clear, does making the familiar strange have ethical or political dimensions? Psychological research shows that familiarity is comforting due to the “mere-exposure effect.” Further, reification is consoling because it reconciles the individual to society through myth. By synthetically undermining the comfort of familiarity and consolation of reification, social defamiliarization has a net negative impact on individuals by amplifying feelings of estrangement and robbing the following comforts from consciousness: solace in secure meaning systems; naturalizing injustice and immeasurable harm; and projecting the present, perhaps with slight modifications, into the future as inevitable. Although social defamiliarization is a regrettable act for the individual, it may be defensible as a necessary yet insufficient condition for intentional and positive social change. People who know that social and environmental problems are primarily caused by contingent and changeable social conditions are more likely to support or even help build humane social conditions. However, a tragic tension arises in knowing that a better world is possible yet made highly unlikely by reified social conditions and consciousness.
