WHEN CARES BECOMES COERCION: A BIOPOLITICAL STUDY OF HANG KANG’S THE VEGETARIAN

Abstract

This paper aims to examine  Hang Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007) through the theoretical framework of biopolitics, as articulated by  Michel Foucault to analyse the regulation of the female body within modern disciplinary societies. The paper argues Yeong-hye’s refusal to consume meat and her gradual withdrawal from human life which constitutes a radical challenge to biopolitical power that seeks to normalise discipline and medicalise nonconforming bodies. Rather than interpreting Yeong-hye’s action solely as a symptom of mental illness, this study reads her bodily resistance as a response to sustain patriarchal and institutional violence enacted through family authority, marital expectations and psychiatric intervention. Through close textual analysis of scenes involving surveillance forced feeding  and medical confinement,  the paper demonstrates how the novel exposes the violence embodied in practices presented as care and normalcy. By foregrounding the body as a sight of struggle  The Vegetarian exposes of contemporary systems of authority  which assert control over life, revealing how biopolitical control collapses the boundary between protection and coercion. This study can be further extended by applying the same theoretical framework to a comparative analysis of works by other female authors.