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Troubling Confessions (Paperback, 2nd ed.)
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Troubling Confessions (Paperback, 2nd ed.)
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The constant call to admit guilt amounts almost to a tyranny of
confession today. We demand tell-all tales in the public dramas of
the courtroom, the talk shows and in print, as well as in the more
private spaces of the confessional and the psychoanalyst's office.
Yet we are also deeply uneasy with the concept: how can we tell
whether a confession is true? What if it has been coerced? In
"Troubling Confessions", Peter Brooks juxtaposes cases from law and
literature to explore the kinds of truth we associate with
confessions, and why we both rely on them and regard them with
suspicion. For centuries the law has considered confession to be
"the queen of proofs", yet it has also seen a need to regulate
confessions and the circumstances under which they are made, as
evidenced in the continuing speech a prime measure of authenticity,
seeing it as an expression of selfhood that bears witness to
personal truth. Yet the urge to confess may be motivated by
inextricable layers of shame, guilt, self-loathing, the desire to
propitiate figures of authority. Literature has often understood
the problematic nature of confession better than the law, as Brooks
demonstrates in perceptive readings of legal cases set against
works by Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Joyce and Camus, among others. Mitya
in "The Brothers Karamazov" captures the trouble with confessional
speech eloquently when he offers his confession with the anguished
plea: this is a confession; handle with care. By questioning the
truths of confession, Peter Brooks challenges us to reconsider how
we demand confessions and what we do with them.
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