Cross-border mobility and epistemic embodiments of blue humanities in Vanni: A Family’s Struggle through the Sri Lankan Conflict

This article, at the intersection of postcolonial ocean studies and comics studies, examines the politics of cross-border mobility and the poetics of blue aesthetics in author Benjamin Dix and illustrator Lindsay Pollock’s ethnographic graphic novel, Vanni: A Family’s Struggle through the Sri Lankan Conflict. The novel interweaves narratives of violence, displacement, and coastal ecology within the fractured lives of Tamil families during the Sri Lankan civil war. The Indian Ocean emerges as a postcolonial space shaped by capitalist and military ventures, functioning to cause disorientation, rupture, and resilience. Based on a blue humanities framework, the article argues for the oceanic presence as an epistemological actor that both sustains and threatens life. It explores how Pollock’s hand-drawn images evoke empathy and negotiate authenticity in depicting forced migration and ecological crisis. Drawing from the theoretical works of Steve Mentz, Bruno Latour, and others, it highlights the novel’s formation of oceanic consciousness and solidarity.