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- Title
"Small Readers" and Big Magazines: Reading Publics in Bingo , La Vie Africaine , and Awa: la revue de la femme noire.
- Authors
Bush, Ruth; Ducournau, Claire
- Abstract
This article offers sociohistorical engagement with readers' letters printed in three glossy Francophone African magazines (Bingo , La Vie Africaine , and Awa: La revue de la femme noire) produced from the early 1950s to the 1980s. It argues for a methodological foregrounding of readers' experiences "in and of themselves" (Musila), in order to assert the connective and collective role of intellectual labor within pan-African public spheres in this period. Drawing on analysis of readers' letters and interviews with leading figures involved in each magazine, the article is structured in three parts: first an overview of the three magazines and their relative political positions, followed by sociological analysis of a database of 212 readers' letters from the three titles covering the year 1964 (with a particular focus on gender), and lastly closer reading of a selection of a selection of these letters and the affective dimensions of "distant reading" they evoke and solicit, notably through requests for pen pals.
- Subjects
FRENCH-speaking Africa; LETTERS to the editor; AUTHOR-reader relationships; PERIODICALS; PEN pals; MASS media &; politics
- Publication
Research in African Literatures, 2020, Vol 51, Issue 1, p45
- ISSN
0034-5210
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2979/reseafrilite.51.1.04