ABSTRACT
At the heart of the Digital Humanities discourse in postcolonial information societies like India is a subject that is marked by connectivity and access. The discourse and practice put forward a very explicit imagination of a connected subject that is also naturalized in digital humanities. The intended beneficiary is posited as “to be connected,” entering a curative cycle of literacy and access intended to reform this subject. This paper proposes a subject of “disconnectivity,” which needs to be introduced into this debate. In the face of Internet blackouts and online bans, there is a subject who gets disconnected when it has potential for dissent or critique. Drawing from 1000 responses gathered in the wake of a political agitation in the city of Ahmedabad, I sketch the new paradoxes of the disconnected subject. It offers a critique of the tropes of access, presence, inclusion, and participation to show how digital humanities in South Asia needs a more critical investment in imagining its subjects as it takes on the politics of preservation, memory, and archiving.
