This is a marvellously illuminating book. Interrogating the philosophical meaning of complicity through highly original reflections on Shakespearian drama, the writing of Hanna Arendt and encompassing also the late work of the great Scottish poet Edwin Morgan, the author considers the parameters in history and the present of the drive to be compliant and complicit. In the context of the audit culture in the UK university system the author makes the strongest claim for criticism, beyond academia, perhaps as a way of life. 

- Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths University of London,

Docherty’s lucid, elegantly-written study of complicity in politics, the arts, critical practice, and philosophy is illuminating and erudite, reflecting on the meaning of the term by engaging with a formidable array of artists and thinkers including Shakespeare, Arendt, Adorno, Sartre, and more. The result is a rigorous reassessment of complicity as well as of commitment and responsibility—important topics in our troubled times.

- Richard J. Golsan, Distinguished Professor of French, Texas A&M University,

Thomas Docherty's Complicity is a brave and important book about the nature of commitment in criticism in a world where responsibility and complicity war with one another to give shape to our interpretive endeavors.  Challenging the comforts of institutional inertia, Docherty offers new insights into the nature of intellectual engagement, "openings" spurred by culture that fight complicity's claims on who we are.

- Peter Hitchcock, Professor of English, The Graduate Center, City University of New York,