Rejecting “His” Food: An Animal Ecofeminist and Eco-Deconstructive Reading of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007)

Shaimaa Ahmed Elateek

Abstract


This paper interrogates the sexual politics woven into the dietary choices in Han Kang’s novel, The Vegetarian (2007). It unveils how these culinary preferences reflect the complex social dynamics among characters. The novel focuses on one woman’s transformative shift to vegetarianism and its effects on her relationships. Utilising Jacques Derrida's eco-deconstructive theory and ecofeminist perspectives, the study reveals how dietary choices shape gender and power relations. That is, eating transcends mere preference, becoming a battleground for sexual politics. Male characters are deeply rooted in a carnophallogocentric mindset, raising consciousness on how they attempt to dominate women and animals alike. In this patriarchal framework, meat consumption symbolises hierarchical control. This paper concludes by arguing that the narrative is a call to view eating as a commentary on the intersected issues of gender, power, and identity in societies, generally marked by exploitation and subjugation.

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adams, C. (2010). The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory. Continuum.

Adams, C. (2018). Neither man nor beast: Feminism and the defence of animals. Bloomsbury.

Adams, C., & Calarco, M. (2017). Derrida and the sexual politics of meat. In A. Potts (Ed.), Meat culture (pp. 31-53). Leiden: Brill.

Ahn, H. (2024). Empowerment and exploitation: Sexual Dynamics in Han kang’s The Vegetarian. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 43(2), 277–293. https://doi.org/10.1353/tsw.2024.a952302

Al-Bayomy, E. M. (2020). An ecofeminist homology as reflected in Salwa Bakr’s Thirty-one Beautiful Green Trees and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian: A comparative study. Journal of Faculty of Arts - Benha University, 54(2), 53–84.

https://doi.org/10.21608/jfab.2020.150163

Altman, R. (2008). A theory of narrative. Columbia University Press.

Boonthavevej, P. (2021). Agitated boundaries: Nonhuman creatures and supernaturalism in Colin Cotterill's Siri Paiboun Crime Series. 3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 27(2), 62–75. https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2021-2702-05

Bowling, L. (1968). What is the stream of consciousness technique? In S. Kumar & K. McKean (Eds.), Critical Approaches to Fiction (pp. 349-66). London: McGraw-Hill.

Carretero-González, M. (2019). South Korea Looking at the Vegetarian Body: Narrative Points of View and Blind Spots in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. In L. Wright (Ed.), Through a vegan studies lens: Textual ethics and lived activism (pp. 165–179). essay, University

of Nevada Press.

Casey, R. (2020). 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

Chong, K. H. (2006). Negotiating patriarchy: South Korean evangelical women and the politics of gender. Gender & Society, 20(6), 697–724. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243206291111

Derrida, J. (1991). "Eating Well," or the calculation of the subject: An interview with Jacques Derrida. In E. Cadava et al. (Eds.), Who comes after the subject? (pp. 96-119). New York: Routledge.

Derrida, J. (2008). The animal that therefore I am (D. Wills, Trans.). New York: Fordham University Press.

Elfving-Hwang, J. (2010). Representations of femininity in contemporary South Korean women's literature. Dorset: Global Oriental.

Emmerman, K. (2022). Inter-animal moral conflict and moral repair: A contextualized ecofeminist approach in action. In C. J. Adams & L. Gruen. (Eds.), ecofeminism: feminist intersections with other animals and the earth (pp. 181-96). New York: Bloomsbury

Academic.

Gaard, G. (2017). Critical ecofeminism. New York: Lexington Books.

Glinski, M. (2012). Simile and Identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gruen, L. (2015). Entangled empathy: An alternative approach to animal ethics. Lantern Books.

Hameed, S., Iqbal, H., Jahan, J., & Aziz, M. K. (2025). Memory, trauma, and desire: The depiction of the unspoken past in Han Kangs novel The Vegetarian. Social Science Review Archives, 3(1), 1457–1467. https://doi.org/10.70670/sra.v3i1.447

Han, K. (2015). The Vegetarian (D. Smith, Trans.). Portobello Books. (Original work published 2007)

Kim, W.-S. (2019). Eating and Suffering in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 21(5),1-10, https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3390

Luna, E., & Herrick, S. (2019). Your story is your power: Free your feminine voice. Elex Media Komputindo.

Mayo, L. (2021). A quiet riot: veganism as anti-capitalism and ecofeminist revolt in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. In L. Wright (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Vegan Studies (pp. 101–110). essay, Routledge.

Monteiro, B. M. A., Pfeiler, T. M., Patterson, M. D., & Milburn, M. A. (2017). The carnism inventory: measuring the ideology of eating animals. Appetite, 113, 51-62.

Moon, S. (2002). The Production and Subversion of Hegemonic Masculinity: Reconfiguring Gender Hierarchy in Contemporary South Korea. In L. Kendall (Ed.), Under construction: the gendering of modernity, class, and consumption in the Republic of Korea

(pp. 79–113). essay, University of Hawai‘i Press.

Nie, Z., & Kaur, H. (2025). Transcending constraints: Female bodily discipline and resistance in Han kang’s the Vegetarian. Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, 19(1), 48–63. https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v19i1.3641

Rifkin, J. (1992). Beyond beef: The rise and fall of the cattle culture. New York: Plume.

Rogers, K. (2023). Insanity, Language, and the Postmodern Woman: Determining Language Structures in Kang Han’s The Vegetarian. Calliope, 16, 31–39.

Sands, D. (2023). Interrogating “Feeling politics”: Animal and vegetal empathy in Han kang’s The Vegetarian. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 65(2), 324–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2023.2187690

Sangeetha, R. K., & Rathna, P. (2021). Behind our sip of tea: An ecofeminist study of environmental refugees in Kokilam Subbiah’s Mirage. 3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 27(3), 159–170. https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2021-2703-

Spivak, G. C. (1987). In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. Methuen.

Stobie, C. E. (2018). The good wife? Sibling species in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. ISLE: Interdisciplinary studies in literature and environment, 24(4), 787-802.

Warren, K. J. (1997). Ecofeminism: women, culture, nature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Zolkos, M. (2019). Bereft of interiority: motifs of vegetal transformation, escape and fecundity in Luce Irigaray's plant philosophy and Han Kang's The Vegetarian. SubStance, 48(2), 102-118.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2025-3103-18

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2247

ISSN : 0128-5157