Abstract
In this analysis of Costa-Gavras’ L’Aveu I explain how an individual can be reduced to a mere cipher, a nothing, not just through physical torture but through the rhetoric implemented to maintain totalitarian governance. Indeed, we discover how torture is an integral part of ideological systems that seek total domination. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism is a key text to my discussion of the function of torture and I use it to open up my exploration of Artur London’s account of his ordeal during the Prague trials of the early 1950s.
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Works Cited
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Hayward, S. (2016). The Ideological Purpose of Torture: Artur London’s Nightmare of Reality in L’Aveu/The Confession (Costa-Gavras, 1970). In: de Valk, M. (eds) Screening the Tortured Body. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39918-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39918-2_7
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