Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Food Studies: Intersections of Culture, Science and Sustainability (ICEFS 2026)

International Conference on Emerging Food Studies: Intersections of Culture, Science and Sustainability (ICEFS 2026)

📍Jaipur, India🗓️ 9-10 January 2026
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The Insane Vegetarian: Gender, Sanity, and Food Politics in World Literature

Authors
Meera Kumar1, *
1Assistant Professor, JAIN (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, India
*Corresponding author. Email: meera.menon@jainuniversity.ac.in
Corresponding Author
Meera Kumar
Available Online 30 June 2026.
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_19How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Vegetarianism; Food Politics; Insanity; Feminist Studies; Epistemic Violence
Abstract

This paper examines the intersections of sanity, madness, and vegetarianism in literary and biographical texts spanning the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries across Britain, America, India, and South Korea. Using a qualitative research framework grounded in close reading, the study analyses texts such as Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, Urmilla Deshpande’s IRU: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karwe, Margarat Atwood‘s Edible Women to interrogate how dietary practices are represented as markers of mental stability, deviance, or resistance. Drawing on theories of madness as performative (Bernaerts et al., 2009), colonial critiques of vegetarianism (Reagan, 2014), and recent approaches in mad studies (Taylor, 2020), the paper highlights the cultural, political, and gendered dimensions of food choices in literature. Vegetarianism emerges variously as a form of ethical resistance, a site of colonial epistemic violence, and a catalyst for pathologisation, particularly of women. Ultimately, the paper argues that vegetarianism in literature is frequently represented either as a pathway to sanity or as a condition that emerges from it, thereby destabilising fixed boundaries between insanity and reason.

Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Food Studies: Intersections of Culture, Science and Sustainability (ICEFS 2026)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
30 June 2026
ISBN
978-2-38476-583-6
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_19How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Meera Kumar
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
TI  - The Insane Vegetarian: Gender, Sanity, and Food Politics in World Literature
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Food Studies: Intersections of Culture, Science and Sustainability (ICEFS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 202
EP  - 209
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_19
ID  - Kumar2026
ER  -