DOI: https://doi.org/10.14710/culturalistics.v6i3.16081

Radical Act and Political Withdrawal in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

*Sulistya Ningtyas  -  Universitas Diponegoro, Indonesia

Citation Format:
Abstract

The multi-interpreted narrative of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian is developed on an allegory. In this study, the allegory is seen as the meaning of freedom where the subject chooses to resist social intervention through the radical Act and political withdrawal — two main practices of action in the Žižek study. This study aims to examine the practices of action demonstrated by the protagonist that resulted from her childhood trauma. By applying Žižek’s theory of radical politics, the results of the study revealed the radical Act of being a vegetarian taken by the main character as her criticism of the violent environment. Further, the subject’s political withdrawal from living as a normal human indicates that she has gone beyond the radical Act. Even though the subject collapses in her effort to transform to become a tree, her courage to start taking this action in the first place confirms that she has value as an authentic subject.


Keywords: vegetarian; trauma; Žižek study; radical Act; political withdrawal; The Vegetarian 

Fulltext View|Download

Article Metrics:

Article Info
Section: Literary Studies
Language : EN
Recent articles
The Analysis of Social Deixis Used in the Downton Abbey and Made in Dagenham Movies Set in the Twentieth Century Idiomatic Expression in The American Sitcom Series “Fresh Off The Boat” Directed By Nahnatchka Khan Transitivity Analysis Annotation Scheme and Its Application to CQPweb: A Study on Stephen King’s Carrie The Absence of Mother’s Love Experienced by the Main Female Character in Jacqueline Wilson’s The Story of Tracy Beaker Adaptation Of Novel The Witches By Roald Dahl To Graphic Novel By Penelope Bagieu Radical Act and Political Withdrawal in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian Javanese Culture Maintenance throughTheTradition of Cutting Natural Dreadlock Hair of Dieng’s Children More recent articles
  1. Anupama, K., & Chithra, D. G. K. (2020). Becoming Tree or Becoming A Body of Pure Intensity: An Indicative Reading of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. Journal of Critical Reviews, 7(5), 598–602. https://doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.05.124
  2. Arostegui, E. (2015). [Review of the book The vegetarian, by K. Han]. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 12(4), 108–110
  3. Aydin CoŞkun, A., & Gençay, G. (2011). Kyoto Protocol and “deforestation”. A legal analysis on Turkish environment and forest legislation. Forest Policy and Economics, 13(5), 366–377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2011.03.013
  4. Ballard, A., & Parham, J. (2020). Ties that bind: International studies in ecocriticism. Green Letters, 24(2), 101–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2020.1830618
  5. Barry, A. (2021). What Is an Environmental Problem? Theory, Culture and Society, 38(2), 93–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420958043
  6. Bojesen, E., & Allen, A. (2019). BARTLEBY IS DEAD: Inverting common readings of Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener. Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 24(5), 61–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2019.1655272
  7. Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Polity Press
  8. Buschmann, D. (2021). What is Critical in the Anthropocene? A Discussion of Four Conceptual Problems from the Environmental-Political Philosophy Perspective. Ethics and Bioethics (in Central Europe), 10(34), 190–202. https://doi.org/10.2478/ebce-2020-0018
  9. Calvo, P. (2017). What is it like to be a plant? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 24(9–10), 205–227
  10. Casey, R. (2021). Willed Arboreality: Feminist Worldmaking in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. Critique - Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 62(3), 347–360. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2020.1841725
  11. Chansit, D. (2021). Subjectivity and Revenge in Karen M. McManus’s One of Us Is Lying. IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship, 10(2), 50–67. https://doi.org/10.22492/ijl.10.2.03
  12. Clark, T. (2019). The Challenge for Prose Narrative. In The Value of Ecocriticism (pp. 78–110). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316155073.005
  13. Dietzel, A. (2022). Non-state climate change action: Hope for just response to climate change? Environmental Science and Policy, 131, 128–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.01.023
  14. Discaia, M. S. P. (2019). Who Comes After the Woman: Becoming-Plant in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. In D. Callahan & A. Barker (Eds.), Body and Text : Cultural Transformations in New Media Environments (pp. 99–112). Springer
  15. Ebrey, P. B. (2002). Women and the Family in Chinese History. Routledge
  16. George, R., & Sunitha, V. (2020). Exploring ecopsychological interconnections: A study of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. Journal of Critical Reviews, 7(17), 1293–1296. https://doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.17.165
  17. Godley, M. Y. (2021). The Feminization of Translation. Meridians, 20(1), 193–217. https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8913188
  18. Hae-Joang, C. H. (2000). “You are entrapped in an imaginary well”: the formation of subjectivity within compressed development - a feminist critique of modernity and Korean culture. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 1(1), 49–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/146493700360999
  19. Han, K. (2016). The Vegetarian. Translated by Deborah Smith. Hogarth Originally published as Ch’aesikjuuija (Paju-si Gyeonggi-do: Changbi Publishers, 2007)
  20. Hancock, G. R., Gibson, A., & Wells, T. (2021). Hillslope erosion in a grassland environment: Calibration and evaluation of the SIBERIA landscape evolution model. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 46(4), 728–743. https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.5060
  21. Haraway, D. J. (2016). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. University of Minnesota Press
  22. Hattori, S., Komoriya, I., Kawasaki, S., & Kono, S. (2012). Cavitation erosion of silver plated coatings in a low-temperature environment. Wear, 292–293, 74–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wear.2012.05.031
  23. Hayles, N. K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. The University of Chicago Press
  24. Irieda, H., & Takano, Y. (2021). Epidermal chloroplasts are defense-related motile organelles equipped with plant immune components. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22977-5
  25. Jin, C. Y. (2013). Male Violence and Female Body in Kang Han’s “Vegetarian.” Feminist Studies in English Literature, 21(3), 205~235
  26. Keck, M. (2021). Plastic (In) paradise: Karen Tei Yamashita’s through the arc of the rain forest. IAFOR Journal of Education, 10(1), 26–40. https://doi.org/10.22492/ijl.10.1.01
  27. Kim, M. (2020). A Deleuzian Reading of “Becoming-plant” in Han Kang’s Writing: “The Fruit of My Woman” and The Vegetarian. Critique - Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 61(3), 327–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2020.1713716
  28. Kim, W. D. (2018). The “Creative” English Translation of the Vegetarian by Han Kang. Translation Review, 100(1), 65–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2018.1437098
  29. le Guin, U. K. (2001). The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. Eos, Harper Collins
  30. Marchalik, D., & Jurecic, A. (2017). Mental illness in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian [Review of the book The vegetarian, by K. Han]. The Lancet, 389(10065), 147. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30010-7
  31. Mills, J. (2006). Reflections on the death drive. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 23(2), 373–382. https://doi.org/10.1037/0736-9735.23.2.373
  32. Mleczek, M., Budka, A., Siwulski, M., Budzyńska, S., Kalač, P., & Karolewski, Z. (2022). Anthropogenic contamination leads to changes in mineral composition of soil- and tree-growing mushroom species: A case study of urban vs. rural environments and dietary implications. Science of the Total Environment, 809, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151162
  33. Moon, S. (1998). Begetting the Nation: The Androcentric Discourse of National History and Tradition in South Korea. In E. H. Kim & C. Choi (Eds.), Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism (pp. 33–66). Routledge
  34. Nocella II, A. J. (2012). Greening Dis-ability. In S. D. Fassbinder, A. J. Nocella II, & R. Kahn (Eds.), Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy Through the Liberal Art (pp. 158–198). Sense
  35. O’Key, D. (2021). Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and the International Booker Prize: reading with and against world literary prestige. Textual Practice, 0(0), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1900376
  36. Ridder, N. N., Ukkola, A. M., Pitman, A. J., & Perkins-Kirkpatrick, S. E. (2022). Increased occurrence of high impact compound events under climate change. Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-021-00224-4
  37. Sadamichi, K. (1999). The three ecologies in Minakata Kumagusu’s environmental movement. Organization and Environment, 12(1), 85–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026699121005
  38. Schaal, B. (2019). Plants and people: Our shared history and future. Plants People Planet, 1(1), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.12
  39. Sidle, S. D. (2006). Resisting the urge to do nothing. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 11(1), 115–118. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMP.2006.21903485
  40. Socha, K. A., Bentley, J. K. C., & Schatz, J. (2014). An Introduction to Eco-Ability: The Struggle for Justice, with Focus on Humans with Disabilities and Nonhuman Animals. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 12(2), 1–8
  41. Soppelsa, M. E., Lozano-Gracia, N., & Xu, L. C. (2021). The Effects of Pollution and Business Environment on Firm Productivity in Africa. International Regional Science Review, 44(2), 203–228. https://doi.org/10.1177/0160017620931572
  42. Stejskalová, T. (2011). Žižek’s act and the literary example. Moravian Journal of Literature and Film, 2(2), 55–74
  43. Suzuki, H., Oonaka, K., & Hashimoto, A. (2021). Evaluation of C. perfringens cpe-positive Strain as a Source Tracking Indicator of Human Contamination in Freshwater Environments. Journal of Water and Environment Technology, 19, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.2965/jwet.20-089
  44. Weis, T. (2000). Beyond peasant deforestation: Environment and development in rural Jamaica. Global Environmental Change, 10(4), 299–305. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-3780(00)00036-4
  45. Yoon, S. K. (2021). Deborah Smith’s infidelity: The Vegetarian as feminist translation. Journal of Gender Studies, 30(8), 938–948. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.1858039
  46. Zelezny, L., & Bailey, M. (2006). A call for women to lead a different environmental movement. Organization and Environment, 19(1), 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026605285588
  47. Zizek, S. (2000). A ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. Verso
  48. Zizek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. The MIT Press
  49. Zizek, S. (2008). The sublime object of ideology. Verso
  50. Zizek, S. (2010). Living in the End Times. In The Modern Schoolman (Vol. 27, Issue 4). Verso

Last update:

No citation recorded.

Last update:

No citation recorded.