Body and Text: Cultural Transformations in New Media Environments by David Callahan & Anthony Barker

Author:David Callahan & Anthony Barker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030251895
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

4 Eating and Consumption

The Marxist reading Katherine E. Young makes of carnophallogocentrism and of Derrida’s longer work The beast and the sovereign I reinforces the idea of consumption in the political-economic framework of late capitalism where even ethical vegetarians are part of a sacrificial system as the “sweat and blood of labor [are] consumed as commodities on capitalist markets that appear to have a natural carnivorous metabolic function that demands the destruction of animals and humans alike” (Young, 2015). The choice Yeong-hye makes of not eating thus takes Derrida’s hypothesis further by considering a more materialistic view of the issue of consumption in the industrialized agricultural production context of late capitalism. In this manner, becoming-plant is also connected to becoming sustainable on a planet that is being drained of its natural resources by a predatory and consumerist neoliberal body. Taking the argument further, it could be said that becoming-plant is not a phenomenon of counter-subjectivity but rather an ongoing and complicated construction resulting from the process of negotiation of the subject with the patriarchal, anthropocentric forms of dominance aiming at promoting environmental, human, and nonhuman accountability.

The organization of the text in three chapters/plateaus confirms this hypothesis. The first, “The vegetarian,” is narrated by Mr Cheong (a male voice), interspersed with the descriptions of Yeong-hye’s dreams, and revolves around his bewilderment caused by her rejection of meat and the non-performance of “womanly” roles as a wife and daughter. Yeong-hye’s gradual weight loss and the lack of care for feminine ideals, such as modesty and shame (e.g. the nipples episode), is also part of this chapter (self-desexualization). It closes with her suicide attempt as the family gathers to force her to eat: “[i]t’s preposterous. Everybody eats meat,” shouts her father (Kang, 2015, p. 39). Then they hold her down and force meat down her throat. The following chapter, “Mongolian Mark,” is narrated by her brother-in-law (another male voice) and presents, dissimilarly, an oversexualized account of Yeong-hye’s body. She continues to lose weight, but in her brother-in-law’s eyes she is sexually attractive, and he becomes obsessed with gazing at her, painting and possessing her body (incidentally, Kang herself used to pose for her aunt; Kang, 2016b, p. 63).

Yeong-hye, on the other hand, is solely interested in being covered by flowers, on becoming a flower body, perhaps hoping through this technique to get closer to becoming a plant. Her brother-in-law insists on filming the painting process, as well as getting Yeong-hye to have sex with one of his collaborators and later himself:She lay stretched out under the blinding spotlight. He carefully lowered himself on top of her. Would their bodies look like overlapping petals, as they had with her and J? Would they seem like one body, a hybrid of plant, animal and human?…Everything was perfect. It was just like his sketches. His red flower closed and opened repeatedly above her Mongolian mark, his penis slipping in and out of her like a huge pistil. (Kang, 2015, p. 113)

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