From a genealogical perspective, this article looks back at the differing definitions of the archive, as defined by historians, and the concept of the archive, as frequently mobilized by literary studies researchers. Extending Nathalie Piégay's critique of the melancholy and consensual uses of the archive in literary studies, he analyzes three examples of literary works that thwart them in the mode of détournement. Philippe Artières' Vie et mort de Paul Gény, Alessandro Mercuri's Le Dossier Alvin and Philippe Vasset's La Légende offer a narrative account of the documentation process, questioning and problematizing the use of archival documents. These works suggest that literature can play a part in the production of knowledge and in epistemic and epistemological reflection, insofar as it denaturalizes, in its own way, the modes of production of discourses of knowledge.