Ambiguity in the Margins of the Text

Abstract

We probed an open space ‘preface instances’ (paratext = peritext + epitext) (Genette, 1987, p.11) which neither falls within the authority of methodology (research and teaching), nor in the explicit field of the author’s text, nor in the book’s editor’s space. Interferences within this no-right land for the teacher in the transmission of ‘literature’ as knowledge will provide us with a sample of illustrations. Subsequently to a policy of ‘democratization’ of education in Algeria, the potential of readers has massively increased, inducing new needs with new reading habits, often mimetic. By importing books at a great scale, this observation applies to both French and Arabic; we also have imported consuming cultural schemata not adapted to an oral tradition society, without an organically produced typographic tradition. Such a rupture requires a serene reviewing and a capacity of discerning its effects, particularly in the pedagogical field, as it requires to ergonomically conceive a tool (the book) to implement a transfer of the knowledge we need. The peritext remains a space disputed by two communication institutions, one ‘transactional’ (the trade value) and the other interpersonal (the intellectual/original added value). In the production of books, these two scales of value are in permanent competition and they often induce a balance of power of one at the expense ofthe other. It is in such a context, that the shape of the peritext becomes an ideological stake, in which a symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 16) works out.