This article aims to suggest one possible – pragmatist in a very broad sense of the term – approach to making sense of the way truth and objectivity function within the discipline of history. It argues that history doesn’t need a new theory of truth; rather, it is necessary to analyse in theoretical terms how truth is understood and used in historical inquiry. This article considers truth as an epistemic term in a certain given – historiographical – use, and objectivity is understood as an epistemic virtue valued in a specific contemporary scientific community, that of professional historians.The main argument is developed in three interrelated steps. First, the article makes the case for a pragmatic “truth pact” in history writing, arguing that the conditions of historical truth depend on the illocutionary force of historical utterance. Second, it proposes that this “truth pact” is “guaranteed” by fellow historians or, in other words: truth claims in history writing are based not on their direct relation with reality but on a disciplinary consensus as to the methods of inquiry, cognitive values and epistemic virtues. Third, it will establish a clear connection between truth and proof in history writing, arguing that the “truth pact” is grounded in a critical analysis of the available evidence.

Le pacte autobiographique

Truth, Objectivity and Evidence in History Writing

How do authors/artists represent themselves in comics? The thesis assesses what strategies are mobilised in comics in order to construct an autobiographical self. It explores to what extent the interplay of text and image in autobiocomics can propose new ways of approaching a self that is fragmented, complex and contradictory. As the thesis focusses on the artistic process of producing such fragmentations, my argument is that these fragmentations are represented in autobiocomics in creative and celebratory ways.
 
As I investigate the processes of self-formation, self-learning and self-transformation, I adopt the term 'self-crafting' – which emphasises the materiality of autobiocomics and their technical aspects – to refer to the textual and pictorial representations and questionings of these processes in autobiocomics. I examine 'self-crafting' as a relational process, one that relies on the ongoing interplay between text, image and frame, by means of detailed case-studies on the respective works of Judith Forest (2009; 2011), Lewis Trondheim (1995), Fabrice Neaud (1992-2002), Dominique Goblet (2007) and Bruno and David Cenou (2014).
 
Each chapter acts as a stepping-stone towards a more coherent articulation of the creative processes of comic production, and their significance in the representation of a sense of self. Shifting from a more inward-looking form of self-production, which folds the subject in on itself, to a more outward one, I approach autobiocomics not only as a contemporary form of 'self-teaching', but also in their potential for educating others. I investigate to what extent the multiplicities of self-representations in autobiocomics allow for explorations of social issues. I show the significance of the framing processes both in terms of formal composition – how each panel’s content complements and contrasts the others – and as a selective and interpretive act: how the formal frames work as interpretive frames that elaborate and validate a point of view, and how they reveal and unsettle normative representations, which open up possibilities for an ethical engagement with others, directed towards more overly collective political action.

Fragmented lives : representations of the self in Franco-Belgian autobiocomics

L'Autofiction et sa reception jusqu'en 1989. La fictionalisation de soi comme phenomene litteraire universel. Les indices de Fiction. L'Auteur et son personnage fictif. Autofiction et roman autobiographique. L'autofiction est-elle un genre ? Mise en abyme. Metalepse. Intrusions d'auteur. Reception. Genre.Hermann Hesse. Dante. Gombrowicz. Doubrovsky. Balzac. Cervantes. Goethe.Barthes.

https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00006609/document

L'autofiction, essai sur la fictionalisation de soi en littérature

Między zapisem a literaturą. Dziennik polskiego pisarza w XX wieku (Żeromski, Nałkowska, Dąbrowska, Gombrowicz, Herling-Grudziński)

The aim of this thematic study is to examine how the water motif is used in Marguerite Duras’s literary work. The study shows that water has multiple functions in these texts: it is linked to major themes and creates an enigmatic atmosphere by its association with the unknown, the inexplicable and the unconscious. The strong presence of water in Duras’s texts is striking. References to the water element can be found in several titles throughout her career, from early works such as Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950) to La mer ecrite (1996), published just after her death. Almost all of her fiction take place near water – and the rain or the sound of waves serve as leitmotifs in specific novels. The water motif can play a metonymic as well as a metaphoric role in the texts and it sometimes takes on human or animalistic characteristics (Chapter 4). Several emblematic Durassian characters (e.g. the beggar-woman, Anne-Marie Stretter and Lol V. Stein) have a close relationship to water (Chapter 5). The water motif is linked to many major Durassian themes, and illustrates themes with positive connotations, for example, creation, fecundity, maternity, liberty and desire, as well as themes with negative connotations such as destruction and death (Chapter 6). A close reading of three novels, La vie tranquille (1944), L’apres-midi de Monsieur Andesmas (1962) and La maladie de la mort (1982), shows that the realism of the first novel is replaced by intriguing evocations of the sea and the pond in the second text, motifs which resist straightforward interpretation. The enigmatic feeling persists in the last novel, in which the sea illustrates the overall sombre mood of the story (Chapter 7). Finally, the role of the water element in psychoanalytic theory is discussed (Chapter 8), and a parallel is drawn between the Jungian concept of the mother archetype and the water motif in Duras’s texts. The suggestion is made in this last chapter that water is used to illustrate an oriental influence (Taoist or Buddhist) of some of the female characters in Duras’s work.

/pdf/la-thematique-de-l-eau-dans-l-oeuvre-de-marguerite-duras-4ewkyd7703.pdf

La thématique de l’eau dans l’œuvre de Marguerite Duras

American magazine of international literature and culture

Le pacte autobiographique

Citations

Truth, Objectivity and Evidence in History Writing

Fragmented lives : representations of the self in Franco-Belgian autobiocomics

L'autofiction, essai sur la fictionalisation de soi en littérature

Między zapisem a literaturą. Dziennik polskiego pisarza w XX wieku (Żeromski, Nałkowska, Dąbrowska, Gombrowicz, Herling-Grudziński)

La thématique de l’eau dans l’œuvre de Marguerite Duras

Related Papers (5)

Autobiography as De-facement

Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical

Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History

The limits of autobiography : trauma and testimony

Soi même comme un autre