Individual complicity and guilt are, in the American legal and moral context, highly developed symbols for evaluating the self’s moral field of responsibility today. The move towards the rational atomized self in contemporary symbolic legal frameworks, however has left a lacuna in considering how the individual is implicated in the actions of institutions. This paper seeks to fill this lacuna, reconceiving of the means by which the individual is “stained” by association in the institutions in which she is a part. It considers the subjective side and accompanying responsibility to this stain, but with recourse to Ricoeur and Stout’s conception of institutions and domination.

Note to Workshoppers from Michael: I present here the draft of the paper that I intend to offer up for my oral exam. Should you, for the sake of time, need to skim the paper, I would focus on Section III (pg 16), which gets to the meat of the constructive move I am making. Suggestions for streamlining are always welcome.