@article{ART003234984},
author={Yoonkyung Ko},
title={Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian},
journal={아시아여성연구},
issn={1225-9241},
year={2025},
volume={64},
number={2},
pages={9-45}
TY - JOUR
AU - Yoonkyung Ko
TI - Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian
JO - 아시아여성연구
PY - 2025
VL - 64
IS - 2
PB - Research Institute of Asian Women
SP - 9
EP - 45
SN - 1225-9241
AB - This article focuses on the problem of translation in the recognition and reception of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian as world literature, particularly noting that at the core of its English translation―conceived as a process of homogenizing alterity and rendering the text more easily legible―lies an epistemic framework of gender. The English translation of The Vegetarian adjusts the text so that the female protagonist’s resistance can be signified as autonomous and self-determining, in order to rescue the work from the ‘misreading’ that dismisses Yeong-hye’s becoming-plant as sheer madness; this modification has been defended as a form of ‘feminist translation.’ Yet this article argues that such a translational move constitutes a significant political failure, for it erases the problem of the “difficult readability of embodied agency,” which is crucial to the novel’s reception, and forecloses the possibility of interrogating and renewing our very framework of the political through such an encounter. It critiques prevailing practices of gender translation which, when women’s texts produced in non-Western cultural contexts such as The Vegetarian are excavated and circulated in the world literature market, reaffirm and reproduce already formalized and generalized models of women’s oppression and subjectivation. At the same time, the article proposes a new horizon of gender translation as a critical juncture that responds to the embodied agency of gendered subaltern subjects―agency that resists easy reduction to existing political frameworks―and reworks the very problem-space of women’s literature itself.
KW - The Vegetarian;gender translation;women’s literature;agency of the (female) body;response-ability
DO -
UR -
ER -
Yoonkyung Ko. (2025). Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian. 아시아여성연구, 64(2), 9-45.
Yoonkyung Ko. 2025, "Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian", 아시아여성연구, vol.64, no.2 pp.9-45.
Yoonkyung Ko "Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian" 아시아여성연구 64.2 pp.9-45 (2025) : 9.
Yoonkyung Ko. Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian. 2025; 64(2), 9-45.
Yoonkyung Ko. "Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian" 아시아여성연구 64, no.2 (2025) : 9-45.
Yoonkyung Ko. Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian. 아시아여성연구, 64(2), 9-45.
Yoonkyung Ko. Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian. 아시아여성연구. 2025; 64(2) 9-45.
Yoonkyung Ko. Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian. 2025; 64(2), 9-45.
Yoonkyung Ko. "Gender Translation and Women’s Literature: Reading the Difficulty of Reading in The Vegetarian" 아시아여성연구 64, no.2 (2025) : 9-45.
