Histories of Complicity

The experience of discovering oneself to be complicit in a harmful system one repudiates is very common in our current moment. Our modern experience of complicity is, however, a relatively recent phenomenon. In this talk, Dr Norman explores the meaning and concept of complicity in its historical context, beginning with the debates about responsibility that took place in the United States in the wake of World War Two and the discovery of the Nazi death camps. In thinking historically about the predicament of complicity he proposes a way of grasping it that will help us to understand its contemporary manifestations, and to see why it is as much a collective political experience as a personal ethical one.