Complicities

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In 2000, Christopher Kutz opens “Complicity”, the first philosophical monograph on the subject, with the following words: “We live in a morally flawed world. Our lives are complicated by what other people do, and by the harms that flow from our social, economic, and political institutions. Our relations as individuals to these collective harms constitute the domain of complicity” (1). According to Thomas Docherty (2016), in the neoliberal present, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that people, rather than recognising their own responsibility, are invited to consider themselves accountable only. At the same time, the need for individuals to examine their own relation to collective harm could hardly be more pressing than in the face of anthropogenic climate change. In this class, we will read a variety of texts from the field of complicity studies and apply them paradigmatically to Russell T. Davies TV series “Years and Years” (2019). Please purchase and watch the series in time for the session on 20 April. We will return to it throughout the course.