A world without innocence

What exactly is innocence—why are we morally compelled by it? Classic figures of innocence—the child, the refugee, the trafficked victim, and the animal—have come to occupy our political imagination, often aided by the important role of humanitarianism in political life. My goal is to see how innoce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American ethnologist Vol. 44; no. 4; pp. 577 - 590
Main Author: TICKTIN, MIRIAM
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Arlington Wiley Periodicals, Inc 01.11.2017
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects:
Ethics
Humanitarianism
Imagination
Inequality
Innocence
Kidnapping
Liberalism
Life goals
Morality
Objectives
Political factors
Politics
Purity
Refugees
Secularism
Slavery
Suffering
ISSN:0094-0496, 1548-1425
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:What exactly is innocence—why are we morally compelled by it? Classic figures of innocence—the child, the refugee, the trafficked victim, and the animal—have come to occupy our political imagination, often aided by the important role of humanitarianism in political life. My goal is to see how innocence, a key ethico-moral concept, has come to structure what we think of as politics in the contemporary Euro-American context—how it maps political possibilities as well as impossibilities. The centrality of innocence to the political imagination is shaped by a search for a space of purity, one that constantly displaces politics to the limit of innocence and thereby renders invisible the structural and historical causes of inequality. We need, then, to open up political, moral, and affective grammars beyond innocence.
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ISSN:0094-0496
1548-1425
DOI:10.1111/amet.12558