New Books Network Miriam Ticktin, "Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Mar 19, 2026
Miriam Ticktin, an anthropology professor who studies migration, humanitarianism, and care. She traces how the idea of innocence shapes politics, from refugee imagery and racialized valuation to reproductive and environmental debates. The conversation highlights innocence as a moral grammar that excludes many and explores collective alternatives like commoning.
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Innocence Erases Collective Responsibility
- Innocence creates a narrow moral grammar that forces binary judgments—innocent or guilty—and erases collective histories and responsibilities.
- Ticktin proposes alternative grammars like implicatedness and beneficiary status to capture collective accountability.
Amy Cooper Shows How 'I Didn't Know' Shields Racism
- Ticktin recounts Amy Cooper's Central Park incident where a white woman called police on a Black birdwatcher and later claimed she 'didn't know' she was being racist.
- The case illustrates how claims of non-knowledge function as racial innocence to avoid responsibility.
How Images Produce Child Innocence
- Images don't just represent childhood innocence; they produce it by singling out solitary, context-free child figures like Alan Kurdi to evoke rescue and moral urgency.
- Ticktin traces visual tropes: singularity, childlike roundness, and an aesthetic of emptiness tied to death.
