ABSTRACT

Nigeria appears to have the largest book market in Africa, aided by its population and oil wealth. However, its publishing industry has experienced more setbacks than successes. Military rule marked a watershed in the nation’s political history, causing the breakdown of much of the publishing industry, among other things. What was the state of book publishing during the mid-1980s to the late 1990s of the military era? What were the channels of publishing available to literary writers? How were their books circulated? In examining these questions, I trace the ways in which self-publishing emerged in Nigeria, its networks and their impact on public readership to demonstrate how self-publishing challenges the communications circuit model theorized by Robert Darnton. I argue that self-publishing subverts the traditional model of book production by creating a viable alternative through which literary writers could have their works published and mobilize themselves against military tyranny. Finally, I survey the nature of self-published texts in circulation during the period under review to demonstrate how self-publishing problematizes Pascale Casanova’s ideas of the world republic of letters.

摘要

得益于其人口和石油财富，尼日利亚似乎拥有非洲最大的图书市场。但是，其出版业遭受的挫折多于成功。军事统治标志着美国政治史上的一个分水岭，除其他外，导致了许多出版业的崩溃。在1980年代中期至1990年代后期的军事时代，书籍出版的状况如何？文学作家有哪些出版渠道？他们的书是如何发行的？在研究这些问题时，我追溯了尼日利亚自我出版的出现方式，其网络及其对公众读者的影响，以证明自我出版如何挑战罗伯特·达顿（Robert Darnton）理论化的通信电路模型。我认为，自我出版通过创造一种可行的选择来颠覆传统的图书生产模式，文学作家可以通过这种选择来出版自己的作品并动员自己反对军事暴政。最后，我调查了在回顾期间发行的自出版文本的性质，以证明自出版如何使帕斯卡·卡萨诺瓦（Pascale Casanova）的世界字母共和国的思想产生问题。