Ars & Humanitas (Oct 2024)
The Age of Deep Mediatisation and Slovenian Literature
Abstract
The evaluation of a literary work is a continuous, multifaceted process, which takes place through a wide range of diverse individual actions and social and institutional activities. The complexity of this process has deepened with the transition to the information society, and many forms of evaluation have been transferred from the material to the digital realm. In this paper, I am particularly interested in some of those aspects of valuation which, due to the mediatisation of the literary field, as well as the dictates of market logic, can characterise highly institutionalised forms of evaluation or legitimation practices in the literary field, and which we can also observe in the field of Slovenian literature. Thus, alongside the author’s primary evaluation, it is necessary today to take into account the author’s secondary evaluation of his or her own work, and, more generally, to recognise the mechanisms of mediatisation (e.g. eventisation, personalisation, scandalisation) and the consequences that the mediatisation of society has on the literary field: the imposition of the evaluative criterion of media efficiency instead of quality (and consequently the pursuit of visibility, success rather than quality), the media evaluation of works and/or the focus of media attention on authors, the hyperproduction of events, the elimination of the space and means for in-depth reflection on literary production in the mass media and the relocation of this reflection to specialised online media with a narrower readership, the tabloid coverage of literary events. As a direct consequence of the profound mediatisation of society, the formerly unified reading public is being segmented and differentiated, and more or less close (digital) reading communities are being formed; because the media connect very different social fields, the reception of literary works is becoming more heterogeneous, which multiplies and at the same time disperses the factors influencing the evaluation of literary works.
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