Abstract

“South Asian” is a contested term often referring to persons and cultures with ancestral ties to the Indian subcontinent. For a variety of reasons, people have been and continue to be displaced from their ancestral lands. As a result, they are either resettled within the subcontinent or in other continental regions overseas. Through the fracturing of these populations and cultures by way of colonialism and imperialism, war, genocide, and socioeconomic pursuits, historical and cultural resources become more difficult to access for the deterritorialized. This thesis explores how certain users of the popular social media site Instagram are working towards the effective reterritorialization of an online reimagining of South Asia. My research is based on a two-phase methodology, during which I: a) conducted a digital ethnography of four Instagram accounts @BrownHistory, @SouthAsia.Art, @SouthAsianNation, and @yaada_, performing visual and textual analysis of content posted to the accounts between September 2020 and August 2021; b) individually interviewed the creators of these accounts. Mobilizing performance theorists Jose Esteban Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification” and Diana Taylor’s theory of “the repertoire”, I examine how these accounts act as immaterial community archives – storing, describing, and exhibiting South Asian cultural heritage material online. I demonstrate how participation in these accounts constitute a kind of identity performance in which South Asian-ness becomes articulated through a shared process of disidentification. I conclude by exploring the emergence of more recent social movements affecting the online South Asian community, noting the capabilities and limitations of the platform to enact social change.