Transitional Justice and Cultural Memory. The Prison Diaries of Ernest Claes and their Literary Adaptation (1944-1951)

This article considers the prison writings of the Flemish writer Ernest Claes who was imprisoned after the Second World War on suspicion of cultural collaboration with the enemy. During this period, he kept a diary that he later reworked into his book Cel 269 (1951), a literary narrative of his arrest and captivity. I will illustrate how, through his prison writings, the subject reacts to his captivity as an escape route to humanness and I will frame some aspects of these writings, such as the importance of carceral topography in the captive’s prison experience. I will also show how in Claes’ case ‘life-writing’ is to be understood as a practice in which the distinction between autobiography and fiction are deliberately blurred, with the effect of grounding the narrative in immediate testimony. Yet Claes’ complete diaries, which have since been published, reveal an alternative version of reality. As the prison diaries were only intended for him, their adaptation by the writer into a book was intended for future generations of readers. This intergenerational experience of collective memory lies at the heart of transitional justice.