When Covid-19 ushered in a new reality and borders began to close in February 2020, I found myself in Prague, the city of Franz Kafka and Václav Havel. Rather suitable companions in such strange and absurd times, I thought. But somehow too obvious. Indeed, for the older citizens of Prague (and of course the Czech […]
Read MoreIn common with many other people, the months of near-lockdown find us reflecting on our previous experiences and work. As scholars working on literatures of mobility, this means thinking in particular about our own and others’ travels, how journeys are written about, and how academics study them. We share the irony noted in recent articles […]
Read More“In YOU the Virus of TIME began!” So declares the Angel to Prior Walter in Tony Kushner’s 1992 play Perestroika (part two of Angels in America). When Prior receives this message, he finds himself, like many of us today, entrapped in a strange interregnum in which the normal, quotidian passage of time appears to have […]
Read MoreA friend in India has shared this notice on Facebook: ‘The British people are finally experiencing what’s it like to have the British rule your country.’ During the past ten weeks I have spent my mornings writing about my great-grandfather, the last Nawab of Bengal, and the confinement– albeit luxurious–he experienced under British rule. Lest […]
Read MoreAgain, if e’er she walks abroad, Of course you bring some wicked lord, Who with three ruffians snaps his prey, And to a castle speeds away; There, close confined in haunted tower, You leave your captive in his power, Till dead with horror and dismay, She scales the walls and flies away. (Mary Alcock, ‘A Receipt for Writing a Novel’ in Poems […]
Read MoreThe Covid-19 pandemic underscores an already-existing, more general tension in our current world-system. On the one hand, disease – like capital – is now fully globalised; it knows no boundaries, and ruthlessly weaves its way through networks of human interaction. On the other hand, the consequences of and solutions to the problems generated by the […]
Read MoreThe first sight accosting me on May 9, 2020, as I turned to the news from India, was the image of rotis (flatbreads), some still aggregated in the thin piles in which they were being transported, lying helter-skelter on railway lines. 16 migrant workers had been mowed down by an empty goods train the previous […]
Read MoreDuring the current coronavirus crisis, the whole world has been forced quickly to become accustomed to living in a constant state of uncertainty and unpredictability. Parameters shift from one day to the next. The longed-for day when we will be able to break our isolation, visit our elderly loved ones or return to some level of everyday […]
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