Abstract

This essay proposes that refusal is at the centre of vegan modes of being in the world. Noting the frequency with which refusal is connected with tragedy, Westwood explores a diverse range of vegan and non-vegan examples of this association—ranging from Melville’s iconic “Bartleby, the Scrivener” through Thoreau, Christina Rossetti, Franz Kafka, and Margaret Atwood to Han Kang’s recent The Vegetarian—and proposes instead a non-tragic “grammar of refusal.” From within familiar scenes of anti-social withdrawal and heroic resistance, he recovers a less melodramatic, less combative understanding of refusal in the language used to make them. This provides, he suggests, a truer and more usable reflection of the daily negotiations and repeated declinations that shape vegan forms of life.