https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1si1.009
Reimagining the Human: Technological Embodiment and Traumatic Memory in Malini Chib’s One Little Finger
DEVADATHAN E. V.
Research Scholar
Department of English and Comparative Literature
Central University of Kerala
Abstract: This paper examines how Malini Chib, in her memoir One Little Finger, reconfigures embodiment, memory, and subjectivity within a technologically mediated world. Living with cerebral palsy, Chib narrates her life through assisted communication, thereby challenging dominant humanist assumptions of autonomy, coherence, and bodily self-sufficiency. Her memoir becomes a compelling site for rethinking what constitutes the “human” in contemporary disability discourse. Rather than portraying assistive technologies as compensatory mechanisms for bodily lack, Chib’s narrative reveals them as intimate extensions of voice and cognition. The act of writing itself emerges as collaborative and technologically enabled. In this sense, the body in One Little Finger is not confined within biological boundaries but is relational, networked, and interdependent. The technologically mediated self destabilizes the binaries of ability and disability, dependence and independence, and human and machine.
Drawing on posthuman theory, particularly the insights of Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, this paper argues that Chib’s memoir articulates a form of cyborg subjectivity grounded in lived experience. The technologically extended body is not a futuristic abstraction but an everyday reality that reshapes narrative agency. The text also engages with trauma as an ongoing negotiation with ableist structures, social stigma, and institutional exclusion. Drawing upon trauma theory, especially Cathy Caruth’s understanding of memory and belatedness, the paper reads Chib’s narration as an act of reclamation. Technology functions as both prosthesis and archive, enabling articulation where silence might otherwise prevail. By situating One Little Finger within disability studies and posthuman discourse, this paper proposes that contemporary disability life writing expands the meaning of the human. Technological mediation does not diminish authenticity; rather, it foregrounds interdependence, resilience, and new modes of embodied existence in the digital age.
Keywords: Posthumanism, Disability Studies, Technological Embodiment, Trauma, Memory, Narrative Agency
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