Literature, Media, ICT and Institutional Uses

The relationship between literature and reality has always given rise to contradictory debates. The various approaches that have dealt with the literary phenomenon, by virtue of their diversity, have diverged on several aspects such as content and form, author and style, social function and aesthetic dimension, referentiality or illusion, truth or fiction, and so on. For millennia, literature has been considered either from the perspective of its inscription in society and history, or from the perspective of its connection to aesthetic pleasure. Indeed, the deeper one advances in the analysis of literature, the more questions arise that call for answers.

The sociology of literary facts, particularly that of Lucien Goldmann, emphasized the relationship between the author as a social agent who holds a worldview expressing the interests of a specific social group, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, immanent or structural analysis of the text, which reduced the latter to its internal organization. It took a long time before the notion of reading or literary communication was concretely established with reception theory in the 1970s, which called into question the excesses of historicism and formalism.

For reception theorists (notably Roman Ingarden, Wolfgang Iser, and Hans Robert Jauss), literature is fulfilled only through reading, or through the use made of it, that is, through its “consumption.”

The notion of “literary consumption” raises several questions, foremost among them those of creation and dissemination, cultural mediation, motivation for reading, and the learning of reading. Several institutions and actors are involved in the implementation of this cultural practice (the family, the school, the university, the author, the publisher, and media and ICT professionals, etc.).

What interests us in this research project is the place occupied by literature in our country and the means implemented to promote it. This aspect has always constituted an important stage for the actors involved in this artistic activity. Publishers, authors, librarians, media and ICT professionals, as well as readers, engage in one way or another in order to give the literary book an existence, a certain life. The literary book as a cultural product, and especially the novelistic genre (which is the focus of this project), cannot have value, interest, or importance if it is not read and studied, or in some way “consumed” as a “symbolic commodity.” It is the interaction between the various actors mentioned above that gives literature in general, and the novel in particular, visibility. Such visibility can only be achieved through the convergence of several actions that take communication as their guiding principle. Traditional channels and media of information (the written press, radio, television, etc.) continue to orient the promotion of the literary book on the basis of established approaches, but the advent of ICTs has profoundly transformed cultural practices and mediations by introducing new communicative dimensions.

This research object (Literature, Media, ICTs, and institutional uses) confronts us with several issues related to dysfunctions in the implementation of the country’s cultural policy and in cultural practices in their most significant aspect, namely the reading of the literary book, among others. It is also worth noting the gap between the consumption of material goods and the consumption of the literary book as a product with a dual significance (material and symbolic).

The shortcomings of the book sector in Algeria are numerous (lack of control over reading demand, insufficient investment in the sector, absence of adequate management on the part of publishers, a weak network of bookstores, deficiencies in training for book-related professions, etc.), which leads us to question the measures undertaken by public authorities, particularly the Ministry of Culture, to promote the book (organization of the Algiers International Book Fair, draft law on the book, activities within cultural centers at the level of the wilayas, etc.), as well as private initiatives such as the organization of the National Book Fair by the National Union of Book Publishers (SNEL), among others.

Are these measures and initiatives sufficient to restore a certain dynamism to the sector and to re-establish rules governing it in terms of industrial production and commercial circulation of the book for the benefit of all actors involved in this cultural practice (author, publisher, distributor, bookseller, reader)?

The undeniable youthfulness of the population, rapid urbanization and demographic growth, the vastness of the territory, and the massification of education also lead us to examine the reasons for this gap between “material” consumption and “symbolic” consumption. Is it merely a pedagogical problem, or a broader issue related to mediation, communication, and editorial promotion?

The internet, 3G, television, radio, and the written press are at the heart of mediation between the poles of book production and consumption. What interests us in this project is the relationship between the instruments used to promote the literary book (book signings, websites, blogs, presentations of literary works in traditional media), the media management implemented by publishers, authors, and other actors to make this product accessible and visible for the purposes of reading and symbolic consumption. The literary book, unlike the utilitarian book (school, extracurricular, and university textbooks), raises numerous problems related to its “usefulness,” its price, and the quality of its printing or content.

Despite the growing number of private publishers in recent years (approximately 400 publishers) and the establishment of a National Council for the Book and Reading in 2009, the promotion of the book still struggles to find its footing due to the weakness of the national network of bookstores (around 200), the “indifference” of the media toward literary events, and the bureaucratic difficulties faced by printers in modernizing their structures through the importation of new equipment and consumables, among other factors.

To address these shortcomings caused by the state’s disengagement in favor of private publishing since 2000, the Ministry of Culture plans to establish 1,000 public bookstores, along with other measures.

All these reasons lead us to put forward hypotheses concerning deficiencies in the quality of training in book-related professions (if such training exists), the carrying out—or not—of market studies by publishers, shortcomings in the implementation of editorial management and cultural marketing, whether public or private, and the indifference of the media toward the literary book. These propositions lead us to examine the practices and uses adopted by actors and professionals in the field of the literary book (the novel par excellence) as well as by media and ICT professionals to promote and give visibility to literary works and their authors. What communication media are used for the circulation of literary products? Who is the target audience? What is the impact of these media on the reader?

These questions (and others that will arise during the course of the project) will form the core of our research, which will extend to all traditional media (press, radio, television) and ICTs. These media will be analyzed in terms of their functioning and their impact on the promotion of the literary book. Specific cases will be subjected to study (literary radio and television programs, cultural supplements and pages in certain newspapers, websites, blogs, and social networks such as Facebook, etc.). Fieldwork, complemented by documentary analysis, will be carried out to complete the research project.

The project constitutes an extension of one of the axes of the National Research Program (PNR) entitled “The Algerian Novel: Readership and Publishing, 1990–2010,” which I directed with my team, and whose initial results will be further developed.

The topic has benefited from several studies in Algeria; however, these remain scattered across articles, collective volumes, or press articles. Among the researchers who have addressed it are Mahmoud Bouayed, Hadj Miliani, Abdelkader Abdelillah, and others.