Chapter One of Vegetal Transformation: Transcending Trauma in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

June 26, 2024June 26, 2024 Discipline: Literature

I have already got my thesis proposal approved.
The title of my thesis is “Vegetal Transformation: Transcending Trauma in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian”
The chapter design is as follows: The first chapter provides a synthesis of the theoretical frameworks of Lacan’s psychoanalysis and Michael Marder’s plant philosophy. It attempts to link Lacan’s idea of jouissance, “not-all,” and sinthome with Marder’s discussion on plant-thinking. By bridging Lacan and Marder’s theories, this chapter seeks to propose a novel approach to understanding how plant philosophy could connect with psychoanalysis. Employing this approach, it outlines an alternative traumatic healing and resistant possibility through the embodiment of plant thinking.
The second chapter delves into the brother-in-law’s grappling with the political trauma of the May Massacre in Korea. Employing Lacanian concepts of fantasy, desire, trauma, and objet petit a, this chapter examines the brother-in-law’s obsession over Yeong-hye’s Mongolian mark. It analyzes his fantasy of vegetal sex and his distinct perception of Yeong-hye’s conversion into vegetarianism, differing from the other family members. Through the mediation of Yeong-hye’s role in the brother-in-law’s traumatic response, the chapter explores the employment of Lacanian psychoanalysis in the particular socio-political context and the linkage between personal and political traumatic experiences. This linkage further contrasts the brother-in-law’s traumatic loop in the symbolic order permeated by patriarchal violence with Yeong-hye’s vegetal transformation as an alternative response beyond the anthropocentric and logocentric order.
The final chapter focuses on Yeong-hye’s psychological development and the significance of her vegetal transformation. Through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Michael Marder’s plant theory, this chapter probes into the trauma represented in Yeong-hye’s fragmented dreams, memory, and rejection of meat. Most importantly, it explores how Yeong-hye’s embodiment of “plant thinking” in Marder’s term echoes Lacan’s sinthome. The chapter argues that by traversing the fantasy and identifying with her symptom in vegetal form, Yeong-hye demonstrates a unique mode of ethical resistance. To conclude, the thesis aims to examine the question of how vegetal transformation acts as a primary traumatic response in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and its embodied resistant possibility. Through the synthesis of the theoretical frameworks of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Michael Marder’s plant philosophy, the thesis analyzes and compares traumatic processes and their consequences for the brother-in-law and Yeong-hye in order to offer further insight into a new model of plant-based trauma healing.
I need the expert of Lacanian psychoanalysis and who can master Marder’s plant theories. Also, able to read the whole text of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is the basic requirement for me to help completing this thesis.
My advisor requires direct quotes from and analysis of the original works. For instance, the quotes from and analysis of Lacanian theories with the original books by Lacan like Seminars; Michael Marder’s theories from his Plant Thinking; the exploration of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian with the texts of the novel.
Each chapter should contain 20 pages at least; conclusion should contain 15 pages at least. 
This order is for the writing of the Chapter One. If I am happy with the quality, we can work on the following chapters.
The Essential Sources as follows:

Chiesa,
Lorenzo. “Lacan Le-sinthome.” Re-inventing
the Symptom: Essays

     
on the Final Lacan, edited by Luke Thurston, Other Press, 2002, pp.

      157-170.

Coffman,
Chris. “The Unpredictable Future of Fantasy’s Traversal.”Angelaki:

     
Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 18, no. 4, Dec. 2013, pp.

      43-57.

Han,
Kang. The Vegetarian. Portobello
Books, 2015.

Lacan, Jacques.
Ecrits. Norton & Company, 2006.

—. The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. London, Hogarth

Press, 1977.

—. The Seminar of Jacques
Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love

and Knowledge (Book XX: Encore 1972-1973). W.W. Norton &

Company, 1998.

—. Sinthome:
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXIII. Polity Press. 2016.

Marder,
Michael. Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy
of Vegetal Life, Columbia UP,

2013.

—. “Plant Intentionality and the
Phenomenological Framework of Plant

Intelligence.” Plant Signaling & Behavior, vol.
7, no. 11, 2012, pp. 1-8.

—. “The Place of Plants: Spatiality, Movement,
Growth.” Journal, vol. 1,

2015, pp. 1-9.

—. “Thinking from a Void.” Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, 2023, pp. 20-25.

—.
“What Is Plant-Thinking?” Klesis
– Revue Philosophique, vol. 25,
2013,

pp.
124-143.

Marder, Michael, and
Luce Irigaray. Through Vegetal Being:
Two Philosophical Perspectives, Columbia UP, 2016.

Meeker, Natania, and
Antónia Szabari. Radical Botany: Plants
and Speculative Fiction. Fordham UP, 2020.

Pluth,
Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in
Lacan’s Theory of the Subject,

      Albany: State U of New York P, 2007, chapter 4-8.

Verhaeghe,
Paul, and Frédéric Declercq. “Lacan’s Analytic Goal: Le

      Sinthome or the Feminine Way.” Re-inventing the Symptom: Essays

     
on the Final Lacan, edited by Luke Thurston, Other Press, 2002, pp.

      59–82.

Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. New
York: Verso, 1989, Part 1

Section 2; Part 3.

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