The Video as a Canonization Channel for Contemporary Arabic Fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5617/jais.8710Abstract
With the media transition from the paper to the digital, Arab writers’ interaction on the social media and book-related videos have become a central strategy of promotion. Besides book trailers produced by the publishers and the readers, the international literary prizes produce their own videos. One of the most important examples is the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) which releases videos with English subtitles for the shortlisted authors every year. Moreover, some writers and journalists have started TV programs or YouTube channels recommending books and interviewing their fellow authors. Engaging with literary history, politics of translation, and media studies, this paper discusses the contribution of videos to the contemporary Arabic novel’s canonization: how do the videos make the canon and its mechanisms visible? Which image of the intellectual do they shape globally and locally? Which linguistic varieties do they adopt?
This paper compares two kinds of videos to encompass the global and local scale, with their respective canonizing institutions and mechanisms. On the one hand, it examines how IPAF videos (2012-2019) promote a very recent canon of novels on the global scale through the representation of space, language, and the Arab intellectual. On the other hand, it looks at two book-related TV programs by the Egyptian writers Bilāl Faḍl and ʿUmar Ṭāhir, selecting three episodes (Faḍl 2011, Faḍl 2018, and Ṭāhir 2018) featuring or devoted to Aḥmad Khālid Tawfīq (1962-2018), a successful author of science-fiction and thrillers. Debating non-canonical writings, these TV programs contribute to redefine the national canon focusing on the reading practices and literary criticism.
Keywords: Canon building, contemporary Arabic literature, literary prizes, IPAF, TV programs, Aḥmad Khālid Tawfīq
Published
Versions
- 2021-03-22 (2)
- 2020-12-31 (1)
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
For content published in editions of JAIS before 2002, copyright belongs to the author. Content published between 2002 and 2017 is copyrighted by Edinburgh University Press (reproduced on FRITT with permission). Text and other material published in these journal volumes can only be shared and republished with written permission from the rights holders.
Starting from 2017, the content published in JAIS is - unless otherwise is stated - licensed through Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Through this licence content can be copied and distributed but also remixed, transformed and built upon for any purpose under the following conditions:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit to the creators of materials published in JAIS, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notice: No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
Authors who publish in JAIS accept the following conditions:
Author(s) retains copyright to the article and give JAIS right to first publication while the article is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0. This license allows sharing the article for non-commercial purposes, as long as the author and first publishing place JAIS are credited. The license does not allow others to publish adapted versions of the article without the author's permission.
The author is free to publish and distribute the work/article after publication in JAIS, as long as the journal is referred to as the first place of publication. Submissions that are under consideration for publication or accepted for publication in JAIS cannot simultaneously be under consideration for publication in other journals, anthologies, monographs or the like. By submitting contributions, the author accepts that the contribution is published in both digital and printed editions of JAIS.
