https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.007
Migrant Subjectivities in the Age of Connectivity: A Study of Digital Diaspora in the Select Works of Benyamin and M. Mukundan
DR. RINCE RAJU
Assistant Professor
Department of English and Cultural Studies
Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru
Abstract: This paper investigates the depiction of the “digital diaspora” in select works of Benyamin and M. Mukundan. Moving beyond the traditional focus of Pravasi Sahityam (diaspora literature) on the physical distress of separation and the yearning for the homeland, the narratives of Mukundan and Benyamin illustrate a significant shift toward the concept of “networked belonging.” Through a comparative analysis of Mukundan’s Pravasam and Delhi: A Soliloquy and Benyamin’s Jasmine Days and Al Arabian Novel Factory, this study explores the dual role of digital technologies as both a connecting force and a source of tension for the migrant protagonist. Situated within the broader field of postcolonial Digital Humanities, this paper engages with the foundational debates inaugurated by scholars such as Matthew Kirschenbaum, Matthew K. Gold, Alan Liu, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and Stephen Ramsay and Geoffrey Rockwell, while grounding its analysis in the Indian and South Asian DH contexts developed by scholars including Roopika Risam, Dibyadyuti Roy and Nirmala Menon, and Rohan Chauhan et al. The core argument is that Mukundan’s fiction archives intergenerational diasporic memory across successive media technologies, while Benyamin’s fiction deploys digital platforms as instruments of political witness and subaltern counter-archiving. Utilizing the frameworks of “Virtual Homelands,” Digital Humanities, and the concept of “digital diaspora,” this research examines how the Tharavadu transforms from a physical place into a digital constant, and how literature itself constitutes the most humane and capacious form of the digital archive.
Keywords: Benyamin, M. Mukundan, Digital Diaspora, Digital Humanities, Virtual Homelands, Pravasi Sahityam, Malayalam Literature in Translation, Networked Belonging, Arab Spring, Counter-Archiving
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