Complicity

Reviews / Votes

This is a marvellously illuminating book. Interrogating the philosophical meaning of complicity through highly original reflections on Shakespearian drama, the writing of Hanna Arendt and encompassing also the late work of the great Scottish poet Edwin Morgan, the author considers the parameters in history and the present of the drive to be compliant and complicit. In the context of the audit culture in the UK university system the author makes the strongest claim for criticism, beyond academia, perhaps as a way of life. -- Angela McRobbie, Author of Feminism and the Politics of Resilience, Polity 2020 Docherty's lucid, elegantly-written study of complicity in politics, the arts, critical practice, and philosophy is illuminating and erudite, reflecting on the meaning of the term by engaging with a formidable array of artists and thinkers including Shakespeare, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, and more. The result is a rigorous reassessment of complicity as well as of commitment and responsibility-important topics in our troubled times. -- Richard J. Golsan, Distinguished Professor of French, Texas A&M University Thomas Docherty's Complicity is a brave and important book about the nature of commitment in criticism in a world where responsibility and complicity war with one another to give shape to our interpretive endeavors. Challenging the comforts of institutional inertia, Docherty offers new insights into the nature of intellectual engagement, "openings" spurred by culture that fight complicity's claims on who we are. -- Peter Hitchcock, Professor of English, The Graduate Center, City University of New York Complicity is an original exploration of our responsibility to critique and resist systems of inequality, deceit and closure. Topics include extermination camps, the management of consent in our universities and closing borders in Europe. Drawing on critical theory, literature, film and the arts, Docherty confronts the reader with a potent diagnosis of our age and demands resistance. This is essential reading. -- Larry Ray, Professor of Sociology, University of Kent