This article examines how Han Kang’s The Vegetarian illustrates what Dorothy Hale describes as the new ethics of literature—an ethics of otherness. It argues that in both content and form, the novel brings forth an encounter with the other characterized by an irresolvable tension between characterological alterity and social positionality. My analysis starts with an investigation into how the intractable Yeong-hye, a social other for her sudden, “unjustified” conversion to vegetarianism, is read by her husband, brother-in-law, and sister, and how these readings speak of the better or worse ways of approximating Yeong-hye’s alterity. Mr. Cheong, who is self-centered and shows absolutely no interest in understanding his wife’s change, is an unethical reader in his refusal of self-subordination, which is a prerequisite for the apprehension of alterity. In particular, his hasty diagnosis of Yeong-hye as suffering hysteria and delusion showcases how patriarchal values annex and rule out her autonomy. While the relationship between Yeong-hye and the brother-in-law is less abusive, it is still limited by misunderstanding, as the latter romanticizes and instrumentalizes the former for artistic and sexual desires. The artist’s insistence on her blankness and the belief that she can be marked physically and mentally demonstrate an exploitative, self-oriented reading stance. Among the three, In-hye is the only ethical one who tries to comprehend Yeong-hye as she is, acknowledging the epistemological limits in explaining her inscrutability and accepting the psychological upset it causes. By actively imagining what it feels like to live as Yeong-hye, In-hye finds a limited sharedness between the siblings; in this process, she also gains a better knowledge of herself.

I then discuss how the narrative form of The Vegetarian embodies an ethical representation of otherness. Mainly presenting Yeong-hye from external points of view, Han rejects a full realization of fictional personhood, pointing to the social positionality involved in any artistic renderings of the other. As the narrative indicates, one solution to this struggle between art and its ideological instrumentality is adopting a bodily approach, namely, an embodied act of imagination that puts one’s own knowable experience in the service of understanding an other. Yeong-hye’s sporadic first-person account of dream sequences, which are driven not by reason but by intuitive bodily sensations, invites readers to suspend judgment and establish bases of likeness by feeling the pain and struggle that Yeong-hye cannot put into intelligible words. In a word, The Vegetarian exemplifies how to honor otherness through and as narrative representation. The study positions the work in the literary tradition of new ethics that sees the value of literature in the felt encounter with alterity it brings to its readers.

Bora Chung’s collection of short stories named Cursed Bunny (2017) offers a broad depiction of real and social life starting from personal crises to patriarchal issues to capitalistic issues in Korean society. The collection offers multiple stories from which this paper focuses on “The Head”, “Embodiment”, “The Cursed Bunny”, etc. Dealing with these three stories, the paper attempts to render critical interpretations of those and the cultural aspects in of the society. For example, “The Head” represents a young woman’s fear of her old age or the desire to return to youth and offers a depiction of how females suffer from age-related issues that make them obscure when they don’t fit into the beauty standard. Also, the reality is presented in a normal scenario that emits horrific notions as the woman finds the head which transforms into herself or her desire for youth materializing through a toilet flush and categorizes her personal fear of displacement as something deadly for the readers as well. This concept is prominent in women across the world and thus, makes it a cosmopolitan issue.

Exploring the concepts of affect theory and deconstruction, the stories reshape human behavior and psychology into the horror that resides within the daily life, and culture of society. For example, the story of “Cursed Bunny” represents the fetish that represents Korean culture of black magic or voodoo and the use of bunnies to satiate the horror within the innocence, and in “Embodiment”, the patriarchal notion of finding a father prevails when it comes to raising a child. The paper also attempts to deconstruct the idea of innocence that society admires when it abides by the regular concepts and the unsuccessful cognition between the idea and reality evokes a fear of the known aspects.

Based on the theories mentioned and the idea of “The Spectacle of the Others”, this paper demonstrates two ideas: Firstly, if and how human lives always consist of horrible scenarios and how they’re normalized or habituated through regular observation, thus creating a cosmopolitan bubble for horror and normal. Secondly, how the stories deconstruct real-life phenomena into details to perceive the emotions of human lives and how when cognition fails, they transit from real to surreal and depict its universality or cosmopolitanism in every culture.

When the first Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1901, the leading Swedish daily newspaper wrote that it would be difficult to find laureates that lived up to the universal, transnational ideal of Nobel’s will, as literature, the op ed stated, was deeply embedded in nationalist expression and therefore, one supposes, did not travel well. The op ed was typical: From the start, universalism and particularism were regarded as irreconcilable opposites in the reception of the Nobel. One trait that distinguishes the Nobel prize from most other literary awards is its planetary claim: The prize is not awarded to works from a certain geographical territory or to works written in certain languages. Therefore, this paper addresses the recurrent clashes between the universalist ideal of the prize and the particularity of the prize’s reception, and the discourse concerning universality surrounding the prize over time.

The focus of interest will lie in the reception of Han Kang’s award in 2024, in Swedish as well as in international Western media. In Sweden there was a heated debate over the prize, with some critics calling Han’s writing “kitsch” and others regarding the prize as very well deserved. The question of (un)translatability was also addressed. Internationally, the reception was kinder.

For specific comparison, the study will look to the discussion surrounding the prize awarded to other prizes awarded to laureates that have been received as Eastern in Swedish and Western media, but it will also make a comparison with Toni Morrison’s award in 1993, as there are certain similarities in how Han’s and Morrison’s prizes were received in the media.

My main question will be: How are the question of universality and particularity raised in the reception of these awards? What arguments are used when discussing quality, how is the oeuvre read and understood and how is the laureate herself presented?

The questions are important as media reception plays a big part in the ecology of the Nobel Prize, and wittingly or unwittingly, journalists contribute to the aura of the prize and the possible canonization of the laureates’ work. It is the thesis of the paper that the suspicion of transnational literary travel and the possibility of universalism expressed in 1901 is still alive and well, although, after post-colonialism, it has found other forms of expression.

My expectations are that the prizes awarded to non-Western, non-European laureates will be discussed as particular, while European prizes will be received as universal. I also expect gender to be an issue in the media reception of the awards.

In this talk, I use Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual (1978) and Dung Kai-Cheung’s Atlas: An Archaeology of an Imaginary City (1997) as examples to discuss how literature participates in debates about the nature of urban archives and archiving as a dynamic process of selection, preservation and retrieval while also highlighting their instability. While Life: A User’s Manual chronicles the lives of various residents at a fictional apartment block located on 11 rue Simon-Crubellier in Paris, Atlas explores how archaeologists from the future unearthing artefacts, maps and documents and use them to piece together their own version of the histories of Hong Kong. Although being produced across time and space, both novels engage with questions of erasures, absences, voids, and the urge to capture the traces and fragments amidst various forms of urban redevelopment and modernization projects from the past to the present. Through putting these two different novels into productive dialogue, I also aim to show how comparative literary practices can help us think across the rich diversity of social experiences and urban conditions across cultures and geographies.