The relational ethics of alterity in contemporary Ireland: Kevin Curran’s Youth

This article analyses the representation of the relational ethics of alterity in Kevin Curran’s novel Youth (2023) to show how recent Irish fiction addresses the plight of the young Black Irish in contemporary Ireland. Drawing on the ethics of alterity and relational ethics, this analysis examines Curran’s representation of the young Irish “Other” with two second-generation immigrant teenagers, Angel and Princess, black and born in Ireland of immigrant parents and desperate to belong to society. As the victims of economic precarity and racism, these youngsters constitute the faces of alterity of the Black Irish “Other” who, during their growing processes, depend on the relational ethics of empathy and solidarity and face whiteness and Irishness as exclusionary. The analysis shows that Curran’s representation of these youngsters situates ethics within the discourse of relationships within the community characterised by interdependency, support, and acceptance and recognises the alterity of the Black Irish as a factor which characterises their experiences. The novel represents both the lack of acceptance and the embrace of the “young other” and situates positive transformation within the realm of individual relationships. This article proves that Kevin Curran’s Youth advocates the importance of relational nodes which promote ethical solutions to alterity.