Enforced Conviviality and the Violence of Care in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

Abstract

ABSTRACT Care can itself be a form of violence that masks hierarchical control and violates ethical singularity. Drawing on feminist philosophies of care, I argue that structural modes of violence are embedded in pervasive care ethics. Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007) demonstrates two contradictory responses to care ethics. The protagonist Yeong-hye leans into her moral values through radical vegetarianism, believing that her eating practices free her from acts of violence not only toward humans but also toward animals. Her ethical decision, however, creates family conflicts, as her moral stand is considered an ethical evasion of wifely and daughterly care obligations. Han Kang’s novel indicates that maternal figures can also inadvertently support hierarchical culture and patriarchal norms embedded in daily caring practices. Her family’s care imperative attempts to normalize Yeong-hye’s diet and thus violates her ethics. My reading of The Vegetarian not only informs my theory of gendered care – considering the normative reflection of social expectation in care relations – but also proffers an intervention in the subtle forms of naturalized care violence in the postcolonial South Korean imaginary of a convivial future.