The Dissolution, Discipline, and Cosmological Expansion of the Self: Dazai, Han Kang, and Liu Cixin — Asian Trilogy

Note to the Reader

This essay proceeds from a premise that becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the more rigorously it is pursued: that the self, the body, and the larger systems within which they exist can be understood as distinct domains, each governed by its own internal logic and capable of independent analysis. The works of Osamu Dazai, Han Kang, and Liu Cixin do not reject this premise outright, but extend it until its limits become visible, revealing that the boundaries separating these domains are less stable than they appear under sustained pressure. What begins as a crisis of subjectivity expands into a crisis of embodiment and ultimately into a crisis of scale, demonstrating that instability is not confined to a single level but persists across them, reappearing under altered forms. The movement outward is therefore also a movement inward, as each domain reflects the tensions of the others, making it increasingly difficult to isolate any one level as foundational. If the analysis appears to circle rather than advance, that motion reflects the condition under examination: a system in which instability does not dissipate through expansion but is redistributed, reconfigured, and made to appear newly situated at every scale.

 

The Dissolution, Discipline, and Cosmological Expansion of the Self: Dazai, Han Kang, and Liu Cixin — Asian Trilogy

Carl Jean

In No Longer Human, Dazai constructs a subject whose instability cannot be understood as deviation from a normative condition, because the normative condition itself never becomes available as a stable reference point against which deviation could be measured. Ōba Yōzō does not fail to achieve coherence; he exists within a structure in which coherence cannot be meaningfully established, relying instead on performance as a substitute for identity that allows him to approximate social expectations without grounding them internally. His exaggerated humor, calculated gestures, and strategic self-presentation do not conceal an authentic self beneath them but replace the possibility of such a self, functioning as mechanisms that sustain legibility in the absence of internal stability. When Yōzō states that he does not understand happiness, the statement does not operate as emotional confession but as structural indication, revealing the absence of a framework within which such a concept could be experienced or recognized. Language, in this context, does not fail to express experience; it reveals that experience itself resists organization into a stable and communicable form. What appears as personal deficiency therefore exposes a structural limitation: the self cannot stabilize because the conditions that would allow stabilization never fully emerge.

 

This instability extends beyond the individual into the conditions of social interaction, where recognition becomes dependent upon performance rather than coherence, and where legibility replaces authenticity as the primary condition of belonging. Yōzō’s interactions are mediated through scripts that allow him to approximate expected behavior, producing responses that appear authentic to others while remaining internally unanchored. This dynamic reveals that identity can be sustained externally even when it lacks internal coherence, suggesting that the self may function less as an intrinsic entity than as an effect produced through relational expectations and social demands. Power operates here not through overt coercion but through the requirement that the subject remain intelligible within established frameworks, even when those frameworks cannot be internally sustained. The self does not collapse under this pressure; it persists through repetition, circulating through forms that never fully cohere yet must continually be performed. Instability, in this sense, is not a breakdown of identity but the condition under which identity becomes possible at all.

 

In The Vegetarian, Han Kang relocates this instability from the interior domain of the self to the material reality of the body, demonstrating how embodiment becomes a site through which power enforces normative structures and renders deviation unintelligible. Yeong-hye’s refusal to consume meat initially appears as a personal decision, yet it quickly reveals the extent to which the body is regulated by social expectations that define acceptable forms of existence and impose limits on what can be recognized as meaningful action. Her statement—“I had a dream”—introduces a source of meaning that cannot be translated into the language available to those around her, and this failure of translation becomes the site of conflict, exposing the limits of interpretive systems that cannot accommodate what they cannot categorize. The dream does not clarify her condition; it disrupts the frameworks that attempt to contain it, revealing that meaning itself may exceed the structures through which it is interpreted.

 

The responses to Yeong-hye’s transformation—familial intervention, medicalization, coercion—demonstrate how deviation from normative embodiment is not tolerated as difference but addressed as error requiring correction, revealing the disciplinary mechanisms that govern the body. As she moves toward a state increasingly aligned with plant life, the distinction between human and non-human begins to destabilize, challenging the categories that structure identity while simultaneously rendering her unintelligible within those categories. The narrative’s fragmented perspectives reinforce this instability, as each attempt to interpret her actions produces further distortion rather than clarity, demonstrating that the body cannot be fully stabilized as a site of meaning. What appears as resistance becomes unreadable, and what becomes unreadable becomes subject to control. The body, like the self before it, cannot sustain coherence under the conditions that define it, revealing that instability persists across domains rather than being resolved through their separation.

 

In The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin extends this instability beyond the human scale, situating it within a cosmological framework that destabilizes the assumptions underlying both subjectivity and embodiment. The “dark forest” theory presents a universe in which survival depends upon concealment, transforming knowledge into risk and inquiry into exposure, and revealing that the acquisition of knowledge does not guarantee control but may instead produce vulnerability. Scientific inquiry, traditionally associated with progress and mastery, becomes a form of existential risk, demonstrating that the conditions governing existence exceed the frameworks through which they are interpreted. The universe does not provide a stable ground upon which knowledge can secure itself; it exposes the limits of that knowledge, revealing that understanding may be inseparable from danger.

 

This cosmological expansion does not resolve the instabilities observed in the earlier texts; it reframes them, suggesting that they are not confined to human systems but reflect broader structural conditions that persist across scale. The absence of a stable self, the regulation of the body, and the uncertainty of the universe emerge as interconnected manifestations of a single problem: the difficulty of sustaining coherence within systems that exceed the capacity to contain them. At every scale, what appears as expansion is not resolution but the redistribution of a failure that never stabilized at its origin. Expansion across scale does not produce clarity; it intensifies entanglement, revealing that what appears as movement outward is also a return to the same structural condition. The cosmos does not transcend instability; it reveals its persistence.

 

It is possible, then, that this movement—from self to body to cosmos—functions less as expansion than as repetition, a recursive reappearance of instability across levels that appear distinct only because they are observed separately. If the self cannot be stabilized internally, the body cannot be stabilized materially, and the universe cannot be stabilized epistemologically, then scale may function less as an explanatory model than as one of the mechanisms through which instability is rendered intelligible without ever being resolved. What appears as progression may therefore be one of the mechanisms through which instability is sustained, redistributed, and made perceptible without being overcome.

 

What appears to extend beyond the self does not escape instability; it reveals that there was never a stable self from which to extend.

 

Reflection

What this trilogy ultimately reveals is not simply the expansion of instability across different domains, but the collapse of scale as a reliable framework for organizing experience, demonstrating that the distinctions between self, body, and cosmos cannot be sustained under sustained analysis. Each text appears to isolate a level of instability, yet these levels converge when examined together, revealing that the conditions that destabilize identity also govern embodiment and extend into the structures of existence itself. The self depends upon performance, the body upon discipline, and knowledge upon frameworks that cannot fully contain what they seek to understand, producing a system in which coherence cannot be secured at any level.

 

This recognition fundamentally complicates the concept of agency, as it reveals that no level provides a stable foundation from which action can be clearly defined or sustained. Attempts to locate agency encounter structural limitations that undermine its coherence, suggesting that action must occur within systems that cannot be fully controlled or understood. Agency persists, but without achieving stability, operating within conditions that continually reshape its possibilities. What appears as autonomy may therefore function within structures that limit it, revealing that action cannot be fully separated from the conditions that define it.

 

To read these works together is therefore to encounter expansion not as resolution, but as deepening entanglement, where instability reappears across scale rather than disappearing within it. The trilogy ultimately reframes the relationship between scale and understanding, demonstrating that what appears most distant is already implicated in what seems most immediate. If coherence cannot be secured at any level, then the effort to understand instability may itself be one of the forms through which it persists.

Related Reading:

What appears to expand beyond the self does not escape instability; it returns across time. Continue with the Caribbean trilogy, Colonial Persistence, Internalization, and Narrative Return: Rhys, Naipaul, and Díaz, where instability reconstitutes itself as inheritance, and history becomes the condition through which it persists.

 

Works Cited (MLA-Compliant)

Dazai, Osamu. No Longer Human. Translated by Donald

Keene, New Directions, 1958.

Han, Kang. The Vegetarian. Translated by Deborah Smith,

    Hogarth Press, 2015.

Liu, Cixin. The Three-Body Problem. Translated by Ken Liu, Tor

    Books, 2014.