The Subject and the Truth:

the Configuration of the narrative Voice based on the Notion of ‘parresia’ in Ivan Jablonka and Javier Cercas

Abstract

The following work is based on the analysis of two literary works that were published in the 21st century: Historia de los abuelos que no tuve, by Ivan Jablonka, and El impostor, by Javier Cercas, two novels that are articulated around the search and investigation of the past based on the events –and their effects– that emerge from the period of the Second World War. One of the categories of analysis that is taken is the one of narrative voice whose construction, in each story, is conditioned by the way in which the subject
relates to the truth throughout the narrative outline. This relationship established between subject and truth responds to the concept of “parrhesia” –second category of analysis–, a term analyzed by Michel Foucault in his book Discourse and Truth; from this idea, truth is thought not as an objective in itself but as a path of search and permanent transformation along which individuals try to understand “what men do.”