The valorisation of women’s work in comic strips: between mediation, remediation and mobilisation

Abstract

Literary mediation is often taken in a service-oriented dimension and falls into a two-way category (linking the readership and the actors of the book industry). However, this conception of literary mediation is rather reductive. It is attached to an editorial logic (with high economic stakes) and does not take into account the requirements or capacities of the target readership, and even less so the interests of the authors. Placing the comic strip as the central object of a reflection on this type of mediation underlines the complexity, but also the scope of literary objects. Taking a contextualist approach, this article intends to reconsider the notion of literary mediation through the mediating dynamics established by the authors themselves. In this way, it will focus on the logics of the mediation of literary authors. Data from a participatory observation process (with two networks involved in the promotion of the work of comic strip authors) will support this reflection. Finally, this reconsideration of the notion of literary mediation, which intends to be globalizing, highlights the unequal power relations that are at play within one of the main sources of knowledge.