Vyshali Manivannan

Current Projects

SCHOLARLY

1. This is About the Body, the Mind, the Academy, the Clinic, Time, and Pain

A born-digital book project adapted from my dissertation that explores the experience of chronic pain (fibromyalgia) and chronic fatigue (myalgic encephalomyelitis) as a queer Eelam Tamil woman graduate student whose patient-scholar expertise and orientations to pain are often ignored. This project challenges the Eurocentric, ocularcentric view of fibromyalgia by recovering medical, social, and cultural histories of pain particular to Sri Lanka, specifically Batticaloa. In the spirit of Tamil obliqueness, this project does not argue: it presents readers with the perspectives, mythologies, phenomenological attitudes, sensory hierarchies, and intergenerational trauma that saturate the diasporic Eelam Tamil experience, and asks readers to draw their own conclusions.

Abdominal CT scan displaying the spine, pelvis, and intestines set against flesh and viscera.
A 2015 CT scan of my abdomen. The spine, pelvis, and intestines are visible as ghostly grayish outlines against the darker gray of flesh and viscera.
Photo of a color pencil and oil pastel illustration self-portrait of a Tamil woman, naked with flesh rips from which snakes and guts slither out. Gears are visible in her head.
Color pencil and oil pastel self-portrait of myself, naked and possessed, guts and snakes indistinguishable from one another and slithering through flesh rips in my skin. My ghostly reflection is visible in the glass. Credit: Vyshali Manivannan, CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
The title page of my dissertation,
Title page, using an optic nerve scan as the background image and a font like Tamil lettering. Top navigational menu text: About, Guiding Concepts & Frameworks, Kandams, Credits, Home, Back, Next, Pey Pidichittu. Title text: This is about the body, the mind, the academy, the clinic, time, and pain. Footer text: “This is about the body, the mind, the academy, the clinic, time and pain” © 2022 by Vyshali Manivannan was created in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. in Communication, Information, and Media from Rutgers University and is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. In loving memory of my Appa, who did not live to see this work finished, and who taught me அறிவுடையார் எல்லா முடையார், arivudaiyar ella mudaiyar, the idea that a person with knowledge has everything.

Taking my initial diagnosis and a disbelieved ruptured appendix as its primary departure points, this project restores a Tamil decolonial praxis to the theorizing of வலி (pain) and வித்தியாசம் (difference)—expressing it in English as the word-blend misability—and critiques Euro-Western biomedical industry and higher education.

This project is a capacious cybertext that additionally simulates the experience of chronic pain and fatigue for readers through rasa (indescribable aesthetic essence); reading orders inspired by Cortázar’s Hopscotch; and interactive and interruptive content.

An excerpt can be found here.

A Tamil youth stripped naked by Sinhalese rioters near the Borella bus stand in Colombo during Black July.
The

Creative

2. Black Tiger White Van

A creative nonfiction manuscript exploring the vicarious trauma of growing up in the shadow of the Tamil genocide, as well as the simultaneous, disorienting experiences of navigating queer disabled identity; coping through (and with) suicidal ideation and self-injury; and the painful legacy of shattered codependent friendships that were toxic in many ways. This book project tells and retells stories to make sense of these experiences, using archival research, lyric forms, fanfiction, redacted news, folklore and familial histories, images, and deformations of the text itself.

Black Tiger White Van is represented by Mary Krienke at Sterling Lord Literistic.

Photo: Chandragupta Amarasinghe. COLOMBO, JULY 1983

The whitewater wake behind a boat off of Coney Island shore, a bridge visible in the distance, blue skies overhead.

CREATIVE

3. Untitled

A prose poetry chapbook coming to terms with my Appa’s early death from terminal complications of a chronic illness.

This project is represented by Mary Krienke at Sterling Lord Literistic.

Photo: Vyshali Manivannan, THE WAKE. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0