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Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World
A provocative critique of how the concept of innocence functions in contemporary politics and society.
In this timely and bold book, Miriam Ticktin explores how a concept that consistently appears as a moral good actually ends up creating harm for so many. Claims to innocence protect migrant children, but often at the expense of their parents; claims to the innocence of the fetus work to punish women. Ticktin shows how innocence structures political relationships, focusing on individual victims and saviors, while foreclosing forms of collective responsibility. Ultimately, she wants to understand how the discourse around innocence functions, what gives it such power, and why we are so compelled by it, while showing that alternative political forms already exist. She examines this process across various domains, from migration, science, and environmentalism to racial and reproductive justice.
Throughout the book, Ticktin shows how the concept of innocence intimately shapes why, how, and for whom we should care and whose lives matter—and how this can have devastating consequences when only an exceptional few can qualify as innocent. A politics grounded on innocence justifies a world built on inequality, designating most people—especially the racialized poor—as unworthy, undeserving, and less than human. As an alternative, she explores the aesthetics and politics of “commoning”—a collective regime of living that refuses a liberal politics of individual identity and victimhood.
In this timely and bold book, Miriam Ticktin explores how a concept that consistently appears as a moral good actually ends up creating harm for so many. Claims to innocence protect migrant children, but often at the expense of their parents; claims to the innocence of the fetus work to punish women. Ticktin shows how innocence structures political relationships, focusing on individual victims and saviors, while foreclosing forms of collective responsibility. Ultimately, she wants to understand how the discourse around innocence functions, what gives it such power, and why we are so compelled by it, while showing that alternative political forms already exist. She examines this process across various domains, from migration, science, and environmentalism to racial and reproductive justice.
Throughout the book, Ticktin shows how the concept of innocence intimately shapes why, how, and for whom we should care and whose lives matter—and how this can have devastating consequences when only an exceptional few can qualify as innocent. A politics grounded on innocence justifies a world built on inequality, designating most people—especially the racialized poor—as unworthy, undeserving, and less than human. As an alternative, she explores the aesthetics and politics of “commoning”—a collective regime of living that refuses a liberal politics of individual identity and victimhood.
- GenresPhilosophyAnthropology
252 pages, Paperback
Published December 12, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 16, 2026
The book’s deep dive into the concept of innocence really was certainly enlightening, and I’d think that it exposes the uncomfortable reality of any binary moral grammar. That is, the way concepts, like that of innocence, force a discourse to split people into those deserving our empathy and those who don't. It’s chilling to see how historical and political biases can so easily pervert these frameworks, turning the protective shield of innocence into something that’s selectively applied. Each binary, desert-based grammar becomes preoccupied with finding either a single individual to blame and punish or a single perfect victim to save. And once categories like class, ethnicity, gender, and social respectability are pulled into that calculus, the framework is more likely to protect existing prejudices than to produce anything resembling justice.
However, I am not quite sold by her ambitious solution. I am not entirely convinced that we can replace the binaries with a vague solidarity grammar and collective responsibility free of affective responses across domains. Whether we can is, in my view, a question of moral psychology which the author didn't seem willing to discuss. Moral Foundations Theory, for example, offers an empirical case that "innocence", as Ticktin describes it, isn't an arbitrary liberal-colonial artifact so much as an intuition operating on the purity/sanctity foundation (alongside care/harm intuitions about the helpless victim) across cultures.
The MFT framework is empirically well-supported, if not fully settled, and directly relevant to Ticktin’s proposed solution, which makes its absence feel like an evasion. If something like it is right, then her solution faces a problem: the intuitions she wants to transform may be rooted in cognitive foundations she does not really examine. In other words, the diagnosis would then be correct about the function of innocence but incomplete about its source in a way that bears directly on the range of possible “remedies”.
However, I am not quite sold by her ambitious solution. I am not entirely convinced that we can replace the binaries with a vague solidarity grammar and collective responsibility free of affective responses across domains. Whether we can is, in my view, a question of moral psychology which the author didn't seem willing to discuss. Moral Foundations Theory, for example, offers an empirical case that "innocence", as Ticktin describes it, isn't an arbitrary liberal-colonial artifact so much as an intuition operating on the purity/sanctity foundation (alongside care/harm intuitions about the helpless victim) across cultures.
The MFT framework is empirically well-supported, if not fully settled, and directly relevant to Ticktin’s proposed solution, which makes its absence feel like an evasion. If something like it is right, then her solution faces a problem: the intuitions she wants to transform may be rooted in cognitive foundations she does not really examine. In other words, the diagnosis would then be correct about the function of innocence but incomplete about its source in a way that bears directly on the range of possible “remedies”.
August 11, 2026
Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World establishes a distinct voice within contemporary political philosophy and critical anthropology. By integrating social theory with concrete analysis across migration, environmentalism, and reproductive politics, Miriam Ticktin constructs a narrative grounded in rigorous critique while maintaining strong commercial appeal.
The narrative centers on dismantling the moral halo surrounding "innocence," exposing how liberal politics uses the concept to select exceptional victims while abandoning broader populations to systemic harm. Upon examining how innocence-based advocacy protects migrant children while criminalizing their parents or weaponizes fetal innocence against women, Ticktin demonstrates that grounding care in individual purity reinforces racialized inequality and forecloses collective responsibility. The central conflict relies on high theoretical stakes and structural critique, balancing political anthropology, moral philosophy, and sustained social critique. Against Innocence stands out as a sophisticated option for readers seeking critical theory, political anthropology, and social justice monographs.
The narrative centers on dismantling the moral halo surrounding "innocence," exposing how liberal politics uses the concept to select exceptional victims while abandoning broader populations to systemic harm. Upon examining how innocence-based advocacy protects migrant children while criminalizing their parents or weaponizes fetal innocence against women, Ticktin demonstrates that grounding care in individual purity reinforces racialized inequality and forecloses collective responsibility. The central conflict relies on high theoretical stakes and structural critique, balancing political anthropology, moral philosophy, and sustained social critique. Against Innocence stands out as a sophisticated option for readers seeking critical theory, political anthropology, and social justice monographs.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews