Symbolic encounters. The body as negotiation and dissent stage in Virgilio Piñera’s René’s Flesh and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

René’s flesh by Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera, published in 1952, and The Vegetarian, published in 2007, by Korean writer Han Kang intersect in more than one aspect. This article analyzes how the novels explore the topics of resistance, self-exclusion from social rituals, the affirmation of divergent identities, and symbolic elaborations of the body. The body, in both cases, is conceived as a stage for forced negotiations; on the one hand, an object of desire and control, on the other, a last refuge from human violence. The body constitutes the stage for the intersection between the power applied by social institutions and the resistance to disciplining. It is the starting point for literary elaboration of the absurd, and symbolic confluences between authors who, without being in contact, design very similar fictional spheres and contents of cultural thought.