Date of Award
Spring 2026
Document Type
M.A. Essay
First Advisor
Min Young Godley
Second Advisor
MIya Xie
Abstract
In the novel We Do Not Part (2021), South Korean writer Han Kang approaches the persistence of traumatic history through encounters between the human and the nonhuman, proposing that despite the fading of public attention, decease of witnessesm lack of direct experience for the postmemory generation, the past is not absent, but in the position as as an ethical Other that remains in relation to the present despite being irreducible to full understanding or access. This paper analyzes three sensory modes—vision, voice, and touch—through which the novel renders the physical presence of the bird. Each mode illuminates a distinct form of relationality that departs from dominant habits of sense-making. Rather than seeking comprehension or reconciliation, these encounters sustain a relation that remains attentive to difference and irreducibility. Drawing on posthumanist theories of alterity and relationality, this paper proposes three corresponding models—imagining, following, and feeling—that enable a sustained engagement with the Other, both historical and nonhuman, despite the persistence of alterity, resist claiming a mastery or full understanding. Situated within memory politics, this approach reframes traumatic history as exceeding both national narratives and individualized psychological accounts, instead positioning it as an ethical Other that persists in relation to the self without being fully incorporated. By introducing a posthumanist emphasis on relationality into memory studies, this paper suggests an alternative way of addressing traumatic history—one that acknowledges the limits of knowing while sustaining attention, responsibility, and intimacy.
Recommended Citation
Zheng, Yazi, "Vision, Voice, and Touch: a Posthumanist Approach to History in Han Kang’s We Do Not Part" (2026). Comparative Literature M.A. Essays. 223.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/complit_essays/223
