Against Innocence : Undoing and Remaking the World

Ticktin, Miriam

University of Chicago Press（2025/12発売）

University of Chicago Press（2025/12発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 272 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780226838755
• DDC分類 320.019

Full Description

A provocative critique of how the concept of innocence functions in contemporary politics and society.

In this timely and bold book, Miriam Ticktin explores how a concept that consistently appears as a moral good actually ends up creating harm for so many. Claims to innocence protect migrant children, but often at the expense of their parents; claims to the innocence of the fetus work to punish women. Ticktin shows how innocence structures political relationships, focusing on individual victims and saviors, while foreclosing forms of collective responsibility. Ultimately, she wants to understand how the discourse around innocence functions, what gives it such power, and why we are so compelled by it, while showing that alternative political forms already exist. She examines this process across various domains, from migration, science, and environmentalism to racial and reproductive justice.
 
Throughout the book, Ticktin shows how the concept of innocence intimately shapes why, how, and for whom we should care and whose lives matter—and how this can have devastating consequences when only an exceptional few can qualify as innocent. A politics grounded on innocence justifies a world built on inequality, designating most people—especially the racialized poor—as unworthy, undeserving, and less than human. As an alternative, she explores the aesthetics and politics of "commoning"—a collective regime of living that refuses a liberal politics of individual identity and victimhood.

 

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Against Innocence, Beyond Innocence
1. The Power of Racial Innocence: Liberals, Illiberals, and Humanitarians
2. The Innocence of Inequality: Defining the Refugee-Child
3. The Science of Innocence: Absolving the Queer and the Criminal
4. Innocence as Planetary Politics: Animals, the Fetus, and Mother Nature
5. Beyond Innocence: Toward a Commoning World

Notes
Bibliography
Index