This book develops an innovative Irish-Scottish postcolonial approach by galvanizing Emmanuel Levinas' ethics with the socio-cultural category of the 'subaltern'. It sheds new light on contemporary Scottish and Irish fiction, exploring how these writings interact with the recent restructuring of the three state-formations in Ireland and Scotland.
'This book is a brilliantly sustained, rigorous and sophisticated analysis of contemporary Irish and Scottish writing. It is brimming with provocative ideas and stimulating insight. Not only does it stand at the cutting edge of Irish-Scottish Studies, it also galvanises critical theory more widely with verve and distinction.' - Aaron Kelly, University of Edinburgh, UK ' Subaltern Ethics in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Literature undertakes a uniquely and persuasively rigorous ethico-political reading of post-devolutionary politics and literature in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Its intellectual subtlety challenges the way we understand recent Irish and Scottish texts and the comparisons that are made between them. A genuinely new approach to Irish and Scottish studies.' - Colin Graham, National University of Ireland 'This is a timely book; written at the crossroads of these intersecting histories, the Irish financial collapse makes a poignant backdrop to Lehner's erudite and studiously executed analysis.' - Scottish Literary Review