Another Side to the Story: Confessions of Guilt in Occupation Narratives

Abstract

This article examines the theme of guilt in narratives of the German Occupation of France. Guilt entails the knowing transgression of a taboo, whether social, legal or psychical. The argument develops a definition of guilt from George Bataille’s Le Coupable (1944) and proposes a reading of the evolution of Occupation guilt through the trope of narrative confession. The three narratives examined, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau (1943), Henri Razcymow’s Un cri sans voix (1985) and Philippe Grimbert’s Un secret (2004), differently explore the confession of Occupation guilt and span the 70-year period of cultural production. The study of these narratives reveals that the representation of guilt has changed over time, and provides evidence of the evolving nature of Occupation guilt in French cultural history.