La noción de "skaz" y la dimensión crítica del relato oral según Borís Éichenbaum

In this paper we try to recover for contemporary critical debate the notion of skaz elaborated by literary theorist Boris Eikhenbaum. For this, we will study four different texts written between 1918 and 1925. In them we will try to appreciate an evolution that leads from a certain initial “essentialismˮ (the voice as the hidden essence of the narrative) to a much more historicist and relativist position, in which it is especially important how skaz appears and is combined with other techniques and procedures in each concrete literary context, in order to produce the effect of “deautomatisation.” In this way, it seems to us that the notion of skaz can still make a valid contribution in the ongoing discussions about the forms of oral transmission of literature, and its radical potential for resistance in contexts of cultural inequality and oppression.