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Ways of Knowing

The World According to Sound

Season 2, Episode 1

Paratext

Sam Harnett: In contrast to most literature professors, Richard Watts prioritizes not the text itself, but everything that surrounds it: the paratext.

Richard Watts: It encompasses all elements adjacent to the actual text: the book cover, titles, chapter headers, author photographs, author biographies, blurbs, small paper inserts detailing accolades the text has earned, if those were received post-publication. Everything that converts the text into a book is included. This aspect remains largely unexamined during the distribution of literature.

SH: Rich is a French professor at the University of Washington.

RW: The pivotal element in all of this is mediation. Paratext illustrates how the information and narratives we receive are not incidental. They are framed and interpreted. Everything we encounter comes with some form of accompanying discourse. We are inherently conditioned to interact with text in a specific manner. One can extrapolate from Marshall McLuhan’s reflections: The medium is the message.

SH: Frequently, paratext aims to make a book more appealing to a specific target audience. In doing so, it performs what Rich describes as “pre-interpretive work.” Choices are made regarding what a text signifies and how it should influence readers’ thoughts and emotions. The paratext is designed to encourage readers to embrace those pre-established interpretations.

RW: The text is somewhat pre-digested for an audience, aimed at smoothing out harsh edges, making it more palatable, more familiar, thus easily recognizable to the intended audience regardless of the medium — whether it’s literature, cinema, or another form.

SH: Typically, we remain entirely unaware of paratext and its impact on us.

RW: We seldom think of it deeply. We may consider it functionally: indicating the author, the title, the publisher’s logo, copyright details. This, in a sense, enables access to the text. It also serves as a place where what might be termed pre-interpretive work occurs. Whether or not we consciously engage with the paratext, our disposition toward the text is shaped by it.

SH: The myriad elements of paratext that one could study are extensive. You could examine the typeface, book dimensions, paper texture and shade, the price, how it is classified in libraries, how it is marketed in stores, how literary critics analyze it, how it is summarized online. Everything, from the physical characteristics and design of the text to the environment and context in which it is presented.

RW: I’m intrigued by the narratives that these mediations convey over time. What do they reveal about our understanding of others and of ourselves? How deeply intertwined is literature with politics, economics, and national self-identity?

[instrumental music plays]

SH: Paratext extends beyond literature to any form of media: films, television, newspapers, and beyond. One might contemplate paratext in daily life: the way a gift is wrapped, the attire one selects, the tone in a person’s voice during conversation. We are perpetually attempting to pre-interpret — striving to regulate or at least steer how those around us perceive whatever we present to them.

RW: I believe this exploration transcends literary study. It concerns understanding the impact of mediation in our lives broadly. I reflect frequently on mediation and translation. The paratext translates the text for readers, facilitating its comprehension even if it is deemed opaque, challenging to access, strange, or different. We are encircled by instances of translation, often without awareness. There are numerous pathways through which we receive information, all having passed through a specific filter constituting a form of translation.

[instrumental music fades]

[voice begins to recite the poem “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land”]

[recording fades]

SH: This poem ignited Rich’s interest in paratext. Titled “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land,” it was penned by the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire [Aye-ME Says-AIR]. This is an excerpt from the poem being recited at Césaire’s funeral.

[reading of the poem “Notebook to a Return to the Native Land” continues]

SH: This was part of a 1948 collection of poems by authors from former French colonies, who were just beginning to gain publication in Paris. Rich encountered it during his initial semester in graduate school. It featured a preface written by one of the most renowned writers in France at that time.

RW: Jean-Paul Sartre.

SH: This was significant.

RW: In the post-war era, Sartre emerged as France’s most marketable intellectual asset.

SH: It provided an immediate endorsement. Something that would pique the curiosity of French readers to purchase and engage with the anthology.

RW: These paratextual aspects, particularly prefaces by prominent metropolitan French writers, played a crucial role in establishing a new literary domain, referred to as francophone literature, or francophone colonial literature, or francophone postcolonial literature.

[instrumental music begins]

SH: In his preface, Sartre wrote extensively about Césaire’s poem, deeming Césaire the future of activist poetry. As Rich delved into the poem and preface, he recalled that he had actually seen the entire anthology at some point.

RW: It struck a chord.

SH: It had been located on the shelf in his childhood home. It wasn’t merely coincidence. By the 1980s, this poem had integrated into the canon of French literature taught within the United States, and Rich’s father had been a high school French instructor.

RW: This poem had appeared on the reading list for the AP exam in French.

SH: In the 1980s, this work by a Martinican author was arguably more widely read and esteemed in the U.S. than in France, largely due to Sartre’s endorsement, who by then had become one of the most recognized and studied French writers in the U.S.

[instrumental music fades]

RW: I reflected on the fact that this text was present in our household. It circulated in both anglophone and francophone contexts, partly due to Sartre’s preface. This contemplation led me to consider the role of prefaces specifically, and paratext more broadly.

SH: Rich chose to focus his dissertation on how paratext, including the Sartre preface, influenced francophone literature.

RW: I then dedicated 18 months at the French National Library unearthing all sorts of obscure, forgotten, virtually hidden…

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text — as well as several highly acclaimed ones — to examine how they were conveyed to a French-speaking audience.

SH: What he found is rather unsurprising.

RW: Nearly all this literature navigated through Paris, and consequently, it underwent the aesthetic and political filters inherent in the Paris publishing industry. How do you make this writing resonate with a French audience? It’s often achieved through the age-old techniques of exoticization and catering to established markets for a specific understanding of the ethnic other. These are some of the logics that are evident, and you can see these once more in the cover designs and prefaces.

SH: If you consider the paratext from the initial publications in the 1930s and 1940s, you can distinctly observe the colonial power relations at work. On one side, the publishing sector in Paris employs the paratext to market this novel literature to the public while simultaneously ensuring it is perceived as separate from works produced in France.

RW: Thus, this is more prevalent in the earlier history I was just outlining. It’s more visible in prefaces. During the 1930s, many colonial officials were the sponsors of this nascent literature from West Africa, the Caribbean, and to some degree, the Maghreb. In those prefaces, they explicitly assert, “We are accountable for the products you’re encountering here.” In one phrase, they proclaim their intellectual victories, as they term it. In the following line, they state, “But of course, this is not literature in the way we comprehend it. It’s more documentary. It possesses this ethnographic essence.” Thus, it’s both acknowledging these works into the canon while simultaneously claiming they don’t fully qualify.

SH: A consistent set of motifs started to emerge in the paratext. The manner in which the books are prefaced, promoted, and their cover designs — which frequently reflected stereotypical notions that readers in France held about former colonies. Some of these motifs are still evident today in Parisian publishing.

RW: Generally, in the second printing of the more affordable paperback editions, the underlying identity of the publishing industry becomes manifest. It’s there that you encounter palm trees, straw hats — everything that evokes a particular vision of the past of the Caribbean, even if the text focuses on current issues, societal concerns.

SH: Regardless of whether we opt to acknowledge this type of paratext, it’s conveying messages to us, framing and reinterpreting whatever exists within the text itself. Perhaps it facilitates our introduction to something novel, something we might not have chosen to engage with otherwise. However, it could also be planting biases and stereotypes in our minds. Rich asserts that the answer is not to avoid paratext, which is not feasible. Instead, we should cultivate an awareness of it and strive to comprehend its effects on us.

RW: One cannot claim there exists an unmediated text. For me, the real engagement lies in the mediation. That’s what captivates my interest. That’s where I believe we can begin to comprehend how we relate to others, and how we understand ourselves.

SH: The paratext encompasses everything external to the text, from the physical elements and design to the methods of marketing, reviewing, and reading the book. Every medium possesses paratext, aspects beyond the actual content that shape our perception and experience of it. You can never truly bypass paratext; you can only learn to recognize it and endeavor to grasp how it influences your understanding.

SH: Here are five resources that will assist you in exploring more about paratext and colonial French literature.

Paratexts: “Thresholds of Interpretation,” by Gérard Genette

SH: Genette significantly influenced Richard Watts. This book is a cornerstone in the field of paratext studies.

“Translation and Paratexts,” by Kathryn Batchelor

SH: Batchelor is another pivotal figure in this domain. Her text closely examines the influence of paratext in translation.

“The Digital Griotte: Bessora’s Para/Textual Discourses on Identity Politics and Neocolonialism in Contemporary France,” by Claire Mouflard

SH: An article discussing the author Bessora and how her text, alongside its paratext, critiques neocolonialism in France today.

“Politics and Paratext: On Translating Arwa Salih’s al-Mubtasarun,” by Samah Selim

SH: An example of the significance of paratext and translation in a different cultural setting: Egypt during the 1990s.

“Packaging Post/Coloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World,” by Richard Watts

SH: Watts transformed his dissertation project, initiated after encountering Césaire’s poem, into this publication.

SH: Ways of Knowing is a production of The World According to Sound. This season focuses on various interpretative and analytical strategies in the humanities. It was created in collaboration with the University of Washington. Music courtesy of Ketsa, Aldous Ichnite, Nuisance, and our colleagues, Matmos.

The World according to Sound is produced by Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett.

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