The Complicit Text: Failures of Witnessing in Postwar Fiction (Reading Trauma and Memory)

The Complicit Text: Failures of Witnessing in Postwar Fiction identifies the causes of complicity in the face of unfolding atrocities by examining the works of Albert Camus, Milan Kunera, Kazuo Ishiguro, W. G. Sebald, Thomas Pynchon, and Margaret Atwood. Ivan Stacy argues that complicity often stems from narrative failures to bear witness to wrongdoing. However, literary fiction, he contends, can at once embody and examine forms of complicity on three different levels: as a theme within literary texts, as a narrative form, and also as it implicates readers themselves through empathetic engagement with the text. Furthermore, Stacy questions what forms of non-complicit action are possible and explores the potential for productive forms of compromise. Stacy discusses both individual dilemmas of complicity in the shadow of World War II and collective complicity in the context of contemporary concerns, such as the hegemony of neoliberalism and the climate emergency.

Ivan Stacy is Associate Professor in the Humanities and Languages Division at Mahidol University International College, Thailand. He is the author of The Complicit Text: Failures of Witnessing in Postwar Fiction (Lexington, 2021) and guest-edited a special issue of the Journal of Perpetrator Research on Complicit Testimonies.