Mihai, Mihaela. “Understanding Complicity: Memory, Hope and the Imagination”

In this article, Mihai addresses issues of complicity under conditions of systemic wrongdoing, arguing that socially embedded experiences have repercussions on the ways in which individuals may act and navigate within these conditions. Her article provides a productive framework for understanding complicity as embedded within temporally and structurally complex constellations, and opens up space for considering the nuances of complicity in systemic wrongs. 

Mihai’s argument develops along three lines of inquiry. First, she argues that we should step away from dichotomous thinking about complicity and resistance, but rather see the two as part of a continuum. Secondly, she proposes that an individual’s location on this continuum is influenced by their position in the social world; everyone finds themselves at the intersection of various “axes of distinction,” such as class, gender, race and religion. Finally, she argues that in order to understand complicity, we must draw a connection between individuals’ experiences of time and their actions; “temporality is experienced from within a social position, through the interplay between memory, imagination and hope” (504). This social position influences an individual’s capacity to build on the past in order to imagine and to emotionally invest in a future, which in turn influences how this individual deals with systemic wrongdoing in the now.

Mihai sets out by reviewing existing theories of complicity. She primarily criticizes the approach of moral-legal philosophers, arguing that by focusing on obvious and intentional acts of implication, they embrace a too simplistic notion of subjectivity and agency. Such accounts, Mihai finds, do not recognize that complicity is enmeshed in complex social relationships, and is often rendered invisible by power structures that normalize wrongdoing. Mihai invites her reader to calibrate their understanding of the practices of complicity by considering positionality in relation to individuals’ understanding of hope and expectations. She substantiates this theoretical intervention by looking at various forms of complicity with systemic violence during the Vichy regime in France: collaborationism, seeking employment with repressive institutions and denunciations. 

The article provides a valuable framework for understanding how structural and temporal vectors influence individuals’ hopes, imagination and memories, and subsequently, how these aspects influence the multiple, and importantly, nuanced ways in which individuals can be complicit in systemic violence. 

Author of this entry: Marit van de Warenburg

Mihaela Mihai. “Understanding Complicity: Memory, Hope and the Imagination.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22.5 (2019): 504-522.