This paper intends to study Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007), translated into English by Deborah Smith in 2015, through the eco-feminist lens offered by Vandana Shiva. Shiva criticizes patriarchal and capitalist systems that exploit both women and nature. She argues that women’s close relationship with nature makes them key agents in resisting ecological destruction. The theory reveals the interconnectedness of the novel’s critique of patriarchal oppression and environmental exploitation. The domination of women is linked with the domination of nature. The protagonist’s rejection of meat reflects a rejection of patriarchal systems that exploit and consume both women and nature. Her desire to abstain from participating in the violence inflicted upon animals reflects an eco-feminist critique of human dominance over nature, often linked to men’s dominance over women. The protagonist’s desire to be transformed into a tree shows an act of defiance against patriarchal systems and an expression of eco-feminist ideals, where harmony with nature is prioritized over human constructs of dominance. This paper investigates to what extent this novel can be analyzed as a fiction which brings Vandana Shiva’s approach together with a critique of male-dominated society in the sense of an ecofeminist position.

This paper will focus on the motive of historical violence and inherited family trauma presented in The White Book (2016) by South Korean writer Han Kang. The main theme of this fragmented narrative is the inherited family trauma resulting from the tragedy of the author’s mother who lost her first daughter shortly after having delivered her. However, the historical violence that occurred in Warsaw during World War II serves as the background and inspiration for Han Kang’s perceptive thoughts aiming to work through this painful personal experience. Not only does she describe her stay in “the white city”, which suffered severe destruction after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, but she also builds an analogy between the resurrected city of Warsaw and her deceased sister who arduously strives to reconstruct herself.

What is more, while walking through the streets of the Polish capital, the heroine of The White Book encounters multiple memorial plaques which have been used for decades to commemorate the victims executed by the Nazis. Having discovered that Polish people still light candles and lay flowers to honor the victims of the war, she expresses a regret that the violence which occurred in South Korea has not been properly historicized. This very scene reflects Han Kang’s conviction that trauma can be soothed only when the tragic past is properly exposed, embraced and integrated.

I am also going to present a short story entitled The Dybbuk (1996) written by a Polish writer Hanna Krall, which also provided inspiration for Han Kang in the process of writing The White Book. The protagonist of The Dybbuk is an American Jew inhabited by soul of a stepbrother who died in the Warsaw ghetto. These two works will be analyzed through the lens of the theory of an American psychologist and therapist Mark Wolynn presented in his book It Didn't Start with You (2016). According to Wolynn, tragic experience can be passed down through generations but trauma can be also healed if one uncovers the difficult past and include forgotten or estranged family members back in the family system. This theory will be used to demonstrate that the protagonists of The Dybbuk and The White Book who welcome the souls of their siblings to inhabit their bodies are in fact breaking the cycle of transgenerational trauma.

All in all, the aim of this paper is to prove that The White Book not only copes with inherited family trauma, but also expresses a strong belief that the wounds of the tragic past – coming either from historical violence or painful family experience – cannot be healed unless they become the object of perception and interpretation. In other words, this deeply intimate work of Han Kang highlights the importance of historicization in the process of healing national and personal trauma.

The presentation speech for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature highlights the poetic as a defining characteristic of Han Kang’s works. This poetic goes beyond exploring rhetoric and language, engaging with the enduring and ever-evolving question: “What is poetry?” This study takes a dual approach, focusing on both the author’s body of work and the study of poetry, to explore the essence of poetic expression in Han Kang’s writing. Centered on her only poetry collection, Dinner Placed in a Drawer, the research draws upon Roland Barthes’ theories of writing and Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of ordinary language and poetics. Through in-depth textual analysis, it explores how Han Kang employs distinctive language, imagery, and forms to achieve genre innovation. By using the human body as a medium, she creates a poetic space that evokes an aesthetic rooted in fragility and pain. Her poetry not only questions the fundamental essence of human existence but also affirms a commitment to the position of individuality through the act of language, providing readers with a bridge that links the personal and the universal, humanity and the world.

This presentation will explore the meaning of history and trauma in Han Kang’s historical novel, Human Acts, through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology. Han Kang employs poetic diction and the haunting voices of ghosts that linger over the massacre scenes in Gwangju, a tragedy perpetrated by martial military forces. During the Gwangju Uprising, many civilians resisted but were brutally slaughtered by paratroopers sent to suppress dissent and secure Chun Doo-hwan’s coup d’état. The testimonies of this atrocity are conveyed not only by survivors but also by ghosts, whose lingering voices disrupt the flow of time. These spectral testimonies do not merely haunt; they create intra-active connections between the living and the dead, as well as between contemporary society and the past. The voices of the dead reverberate across time, unsettling both history and the unrealized futures that never came to be. This presentation will offer an in-depth analysis of these connections through a close reading of Human Acts.

The London Review of Books (April 5, 2018) draws a compelling parallel between Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved and Han Kang’s works in their representation of devastating historical violence. As testimonial literature, Han’s writings resonate not only with Holocaust literature but also with diverse histories of violence across the globe.

This presentation examines the concept of liminality in the historical testimonial literature of Han Kang from South Korea and Breyten Breytenbach from South Africa. Their works reimagine historical violence through multiple liminal perspectives that transcend conventional boundaries of representation. This analysis explores several intersecting themes: the Buddhist philosophical concept of the endless fluidity between yin and yang; the permeable boundaries between life and death (rooted in Buddhist notions of reincarnation); Breytenbach’s exploration of nothingness in dialogue with Han’s metaphysical use of white; and the dissolution of boundaries between human and animal, leading to post-humanist considerations. Ultimately, both authors posit love and compassion as transformative responses to historical violence.

This comparative study investigates how these two authors, emerging from distinct geopolitical contexts, articulate historical violence and its traumatic aftermath in their respective societies. Their engagement with liminality includes a critique of contemporary violence, the articulation of survivor’s guilt and trauma (embodying Rothberg’s concept of the implicated subject), and the enactment of post-human performances that, following Deleuzian thought, offer healing and empathetic possibilities in contemporary reality. The analysis demonstrates how both authors employ liminality as a literary strategy to navigate historical trauma and forge pathways toward reconciliation and understanding—or toward what Han powerfully conceptualizes as 'love'.