Complicity

Thomas Docherty is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick. He is the author of fourteen books, including Universities at War (2014), Confessions: The Philosophy of Transparency (2012), Aesthetic Democracy (2006), Criticism and Modernity (1999), Alterities (1996) and After Theory (1996).

• Preface and Acknowledgements / 1. Introduction: On Being a Bastard / 2. Diplomacy and Law / 3. Accountancy; or, on Being a Bureaucrat / 4. Skin in the Game / 5. On Democratic Responsibility / 6. ‘Open the Doors!’; or, On Commitment and Reserve / Bibliography / Index

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.