Criticism and nonfiction. Notes for rethinking the genre in times of "post-truth"

Abstract

Nonfiction is an uncomfortable territory for criticism. While academic studies linked to literary theory have often been suspicious of truth, nonfiction cannot simply allow itself this distrust. In this article, we propose to reflect on the paradoxical and productive place that the question of truth occupies in some contemporary expressions of narrative nonfiction. In the face of the "post-truth" paradigm, which tends to dismiss the relevance of the concept in contemporary culture, the non-fiction of the last two decades does not dispense with the problem, but rather institutes it as the object of its narrative exploration. Thus, we will argue that the dilemmas and paradoxes derived from the commitment to the real facts adopted by these texts, far from paralyzing writing, are constituted as motifs of aesthetic creation.