Imaginings, Narratives and Otherness: On the Critical Hermeneutics of Richard Kearney

TLDR: Kearney is a member of the generation of Irish intellectuals who have come to prominence in the wake of Ireland's gradual emergence from its years of national self-enclosure.

Abstract: Richard Kearney is a member of the generation of Irish intellectuals who have come to prominence in the wake of Ireland’s gradual emergence from its years of national self-enclosure. Ireland’s embrace and support for the then European Economic Union in 1973, and its ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, represent its own escape from this legacy, and from its historical subordination to, and dependence on the UK. This orientation towards Europe is part of Ireland’s post-imperial and post-national sensibility. Richard Kearney’s work embodies this postnational sensibility and European orientation, and is represented especially by his Postnationalist Ireland (1997). In his more recent Strangers, Gods and Monsters (2002a), this orientation is given greater critical voice in addressing the forms of demonization towards others, strangers and outsiders that have occurred in the current period. Accompanying his critical engagement with contemporary Ireland, Kearney has also critically engaged with the French hermeneutic,