• Like judicial phenomena, legal methods do not exist as such, and their effectiveness is only apparent because they are formally constructed and contractually recognized by all parties at a given moment in history. Proof in law is therefore only proof because it forms part of the phenomena which are historically empowered by the law, morality, common sense, politics, etc. to produce judicial or legal truth regarding a case. And like any other proof, and like any other legal (and judicial) phenomenon and method, avowal is no exception to the rule. However, in this context, avowal had a predominant place in the law of the ancien régime, as it does in contemporary law. But no matter how predominant avowal may be, it offers only one version of the judicial truth at a given moment in the case. It represents one judicial truth, in other words one possible version of the truth subject to judgment, in that this avowal has been obtained as a result of particular procedures. This is the question in which literature took an interest: starting from considerations of law, in fact, literature gives itself some leeway, distances itself, in relation to legal proof, and examines it at another level, doubts its probative nature or dreads its mechanical and public application. This is why literature sees limits which the law should not cross and recounts the silences it must accept. In Madame de Lafayette’s novel The Princess of Clèves, Madame de Clèves’ avowal, so probative and so fit to condemn her to a process of public punishment, remains secret, judged by her husband and assumed by the guilty woman within the limits of intimacy, and becomes a terrible and much more violent private punishment. For readers it gives rise to an examination dealing not only with that particular avowal, but with avowal as such and in all circumstances, as manifest and sufficient proof in the eyes of the law and those of private consciences. Literature, which thus makes use of the legal and judicial method of proof by avowal, continues at the same time to analyze it, displace it, surround it by its other aspects – those of conscience, intimacy or special interest – to take hold of its weaknesses and provoke debate on the tangible signs of proof and on proof itself, in other words the beliefs which determine it.

• In his 1997 documentary A Visitor from the Living, Claude Lanzmann confronts the mass denial of Maurice Rossel, the Red Cross delegate who visited the camp of Terezín in June 1944. Rossel was completely deceived by the Nazi masquerade which consisted of disguising the horror of the camp behind a decor hastily constructed in view of the inspection. The film shows the figure of the witness in crisis and, more radically, challenges the notion of visibility itself, which ceases to be a manifestation of reality but the perverted place of its dissimulation.

• Since decolonization, French cinema has been regularly confronted with the spectacle of its guilt, through depictions of the exactions committed and of the defeat. Over the years the film subject of avowal has thus become as much the expression of guilt as of a desire to acknowledge the traumatism suffered by the French combatants.

• A quarter of a century after the death of Sékou Touré, Guinea finds it difficult to assume its past. This failing memory prevents it from putting together the scattered fragments of its history. There is a gap between the official memory propagated by the totalitarian regime and the historical reality. In this conflict between memory as a need and memory as a duty, the archives, which I replace in the context of the procedure for extorting confessions, form my main source of information. In this contribution we propose to examine how the contents of depositions, the way in which they are presented and the scenarios at work in the textual framework reveal the designated figure of the guilty party on the basis of a collection of ill-assorted facts and events.

• An analysis of the comments on the French press on Günter Grass’s avowal of his past in the Waffen-SS gives rise to many surprises. The initial shock was followed by an effort at contextualization which shifted consideration towards memory, both individual and collective. Thus the contexts in which Günter Grass’s past was examined were rooted in the ties which had developed between the writer and some French intellectuals.

Joanna Teklik : L’affaire Popieluszko ou l'histoire d'un aveu politique singulier (pdf) [The murder of Fr. Popieluszko, or the story of an unusual political confession]

Other subjects

Sabina Frontera : « Un espace de liberté ». Les internés militaires italiens à Wietzendorf (pdf) ["A space of freedom": the Italian soldiers interned at Wietzendorf]

Izabela Kazejak : Between Assimilation and Emigration: Jews in Wroclaw from the Second World War to 1968 (pdf)