Complicity, Past and Present: Portrayals of Involvement in Mass Violence and Terror in Documentary Fiction
By Juliane Prade-Weiss. One of the puzzling questions about Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and other conflicts is why people participate in, support, or condone mass violence when it appears, for observers, so glaringly wrong. Reasons for becoming complicit with violence against civilians vary with individual positions as well as historical and regional contexts. Participation in, aiding and abetting mass violence and the structures of authoritarian, totalitarian or other regimes exerting it are key issues in the social sciences and in history. Yet, literary texts can contribute to understanding complicity, too.