TRUTH AND PROOF: HISTORY, RHETORIC, LITERATURE, MEMORY

Abstract

In these challenging times for historical knowledge, marked by demands of individual and collective memories, knowledge-claims in literature, and the siege of various systems of production and consumption of falsehood, it is imperative to delimit the conditions that make history-writing possible. This article discusses such conditions based on the issue of "the will to truth" and the relationship between rhetoric and proof, history, fiction and literature, and memory and forgetting. The objective is to show the risks of dismantling the authority of the notion of truth in its ethical and epistemological foundations, which are essential to the defense of democratic societies.