A chronicle, a memoir, a reflection on the pandemic, and a cultural analysis of the new spatial, social, and epistemological forms that have arisen with it, this volume weaves together cultural history, aesthetics, and urban and digital studies. It looks at the particular ways in which the possibilities for touch, touching and being touched, both physically and affectively, are reconfigured by the pandemic. How are love, care, and humanity’s complex relationships with technology and nature played out in the interval between abandoned city centres and digitally mediated gatherings? How can we comprehend the reconfiguration of relationships through the human response to the pandemic as an experience that concerns us all but affects each of us in different ways? How do we think through the technological and material dependencies that the pandemic situation establishes? And how does this allow us to imagine the world beyond the pandemic—both utopian and dystopian? The essays in this book explore the new forms of intimacy and distance that are developing in the wake of COVID-19, offering a distinctive, topical analysis in the fields of urban and digital studies.
