Portrait of the Writer as a Traitor: the French Purge trials (1944-1953)

To use the term “treason” to describe the attitude of a writer might seem an oxymoron. After all, isn’t the writer the incarnation in the modern imagination of freedom and disinterestedness? Unattached, free from dogma and social constraints, he is assumed to obey only the dictates of his free subjectivity and his immediate inner convictions. In that condition, what cause could a writer betray? And if his positions are inconsistent, is that not the perfect proof of his freedom from all determ...