Introducing Complicity

Afxentis Afxentiou, Robin Dunford and Michael Neu

This book emerged from a conference and subsequent workshop on "Complicity", and the questions about complicity with which we started remain. The two positive conclusions we can offer with confidence are these. First, complicity is a valuable and underestimated tool for the analysis and critique of social relations. Second, it would be a mistake to offer a fixed or rigid definition of complicity, let alone one that we could claim to be objectively correct. Any attempt to establish, once and for all, the nature and scope of complicity would do little more than shut down important avenues for critical analysis; and in so doing, it would detract from our ability to imagine effective resistance against the causes of avoidable harms that can be elucidated through the lens of complicity. The conceptual exploration and case studies offered in this volume are thus intended to encourage critique and imagination, rather than to offer authoritative pronunciations and abstract analytic truths. In fact, we hope to suggest that there are ways of thinking and writing about complicity which are themselves complicit, particularly if they fail to question the existing political, social and economic order.

In the next section, on 'Atomistic Complicity', we outline an account of complicity according to which law-abiding individuals can walk through life without ever being complicit: as long as they do not break what Thomas Docherty, in his contribution, calls 'the law of the land'. In the following section, on 'Broadening Complicity', we suggest that there are limits to such an account of complicity, and introduce the broader, more critically attentive approach to complicity that unites the chapters in this volume. Through the example of our complicity with wars waged by democratically elected governments, we offer a key argument recurring throughout this book: that reflecting on complicity can operate as a lens through which to understand and recognize our – the editors', authors', readers' and many others' – role in producing and upholding, and hence being complicit in, social structures that have harmful, indeed often fatal, effects. Critically reflecting on such structural complicity suggests that we are sometimes – perhaps often – forced to be complicit. Non-complicity, as Pam Laidman suggests in her chapter, is not always an option. We can be caught in "complicity dilemmas": situations in which avoiding one form of complicity results in our becoming complicit in some other way. When confronting a complicity dilemma, however, our thoughts should not simply turn to the question of what is the right thing to do given the miserable circumstances (to which there may be no plausible answer, as hard as we may try to find one); nor should we seek to excuse, justify or perhaps even (secretly) celebrate the "dirty hands" we acquire in choosing the "least bad" option. Rather, such situations should encourage us to think about ways in which we ought to resist, collectively and individually, the social structures and power relations that force us to be complicit in wrongdoing. The remaining two sections – 'Structural Complicity and the Question of Blame' and 'Resistance: Complicity Dilemmas and Anti-Complicity' – consider these issues in more depth. Throughout this chapter, we also introduce some of the ideas – "structural complicity", "complicity dilemmas" and "anti-complicity" – that stem from the collective reflections on complicity that have been at the heart of this project.

ATOMISTIC COMPLICITY

How is the law-abiding citizen said to be able to walk through life without ever being complicit? Well, simply by following the rules – both legal rules (to avoid being complicit in a crime) and moral rules (to avoid being complicit in moral wrongdoing). A complicit act contributes, in some way, to wrongdoing. It facilitates wrongdoing, covers it up, or makes it possible in the first place by creating the conditions which enable it to occur. The assumption that is often made here is that the wrongdoing in question is clearly identifiable; indeed, that the wrong doer is clearly identifiable. The accomplice knows, or ought to know (in the sense that they can reasonably be expected to know), what they are complicit in, and who they are complicit with. They know, or ought to know, that they are involved in the breaking of a legal and/or moral rule, and that this is wrong. And thus their being complicit is intentional, or at least reckless or negligent; it is in some way deliberate. The accomplice has chosen to act in a way which contributes to wrongdoing; or they have refrained from acting in a way which would have thrown a spanner in the wrongdoer's works – if, of course, they could reasonably be expected to have done so. There is a tacit assumption here: the accomplice could avoid being complicit and walk through life never failing to avoid it. If they do fail, they share responsibility, if not necessarily to the same extent as the main culprit, for the wrong done. They are thus liable to blame, criticism and perhaps punishment.

We take this atomistic account of complicity to be a dominant understanding of complicity in the liberal, democratic state. According to this understanding, complicity is an exclusively individual affair. The focus here is on agency, not structure. The question is not, "What structural factors resulted in X being complicit?" Nor is it, "What sorts of complicities arise, and what sorts of complicity might be unavoidable, when individuals operate and interact in particular social structures?" Instead, the question is: "What individual, or group of individuals, was complicit with whom in the violation of which rule?" From this standpoint, complicity's entire ontological fabric consists of individuals' involvement in...