Veganism against Patriarchy: Non-Human Animal and Animalized Violence in The Vegetarian
Deborah Schrijvers discusses another oppressive system in her article
“Veganism against Patriarchy,” which posits that Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian confronts the reader with a non-human gaze. This gaze, which Schrijvers conceptualizes through Emmanuel Levinas
and Jacques Derrida, deconstructs the current dominant “patriarchal
framework” and the oppression inherent within it. Subsequently,
Schrijvers uses an ecofeminist lens to show how the novel interlinks the suffering of its female protagonists with that of the animals. She concludes that, through these connections, the novel highlights the ways language can take on the role “of dominance and the ability to mute” marginalized others (133), as well as the actions that subvert these structures.