Nomadic Narratives: Digital Nomadism and Identity in Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and Mandala

Abstract

This paper examines the work of Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala (2000), in the light of the theoretical perspective of the book by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Nomadology in A Thousand Plateaus. Although the memoir is historically analyzed in the context of diaspora, trauma and postcolonial identity, the presented research predicts mobility as a form of identity. The story of Pham cycling through the United States, Mexico and Vietnam embodies a deterritorized subject that identity is not solved in America or recreated in Vietnam but is constantly created through motion. His mind, e.g. that he is neither American nor Vietnamese, not exactly is a liminality and rhizomatic identity, that is destabilizing the notions of home and belonging. The trauma is another way of organizing mobility, as the death of Chi stalks the progression of Pham and catalyzes compulsive repetitiveness as evidenced in the memoir. When Catfish and Mandala are put into the context of Nomadology, the work shows how the narrative of Pham predicts the modern-day digital nomadism in which the identity is built through circulation and not rootedness. The strategy extends critical discourse to the exile and hybridity and places the memoir by Pham in a more philosophical context on mobility as ontology. Finally, the study highlights the potential of literature to anticipate socio-cultural shifts, as it provides some information about identity formation in a more mobile and networked world.