| Summary/Abstract |
There is an abruptness to exile. Exile is defined far less by our distance from any particular place or people and far more by the consciousness that they are irrevocably unreachable. In counterpoint, our sense of cosmopolitanism rests not in the act of travel but in its possibility. It is for this reason, the curtailment not simply of travel but also the imagined possibility of travel, that the Covid-19 pandemic has bred a sense of exile around the globe. Even if we are now trapped in what we would regard as home, many of us nonetheless have a jarring sense of fixity, a feeling that we are exiled global citizens. We necessarily and often unconsciously adapt our routines and habits—and imperceptibly but ineluctably our goals and beliefs will change as well—in keeping with the much altered world and our much altered place within it.
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