Organ Writing and the Reconstruction of Existence: An Interpretation of I Put the Evening in the Drawer from the Perspective of Life Poetics
Abstract
This paper centers on Han Kang's poetry collection I Put the Evening in the Drawer, notable for its organ imagery as it probes core human existential themes—life, nothingness, death. Adopting the lens of life poetics, this study examines how Han Kang, through her "organ writing," articulates the dissociation between the body and organic coding, unpacks the symbolic connotations and subversive potential of language, and seeks reconstruction and rebirth amid fragmentation. Building on an exposition of life poetics' core propositions, the paper draws on Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of the "stratum" and the "rigid segmentary line" to analyze the contradictions in bodily organ writing and the escape from coding that it reveals. It then turns to the "tongue" as a linguistic symbol to examine its multiple layers of meaning, and finally argues that Han Kang moves toward a vision of life's wholeness by foregrounding the fragmentation of the body.
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