LAUSR

terms “diaspora,” “emigration,” “exile” had not become “archaic,” “aged” (245, 246, inter alia). As Russia’s aggression against Ukraine wiped the slate clean, the vaunted “global connectivity” has revealed the ugly face of censorship as vicious under Putin as it is absurd under Mark Zuckerberg (the exile of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya’s graphic anti-war poetry from Facebook is an instructive example of an age-old punishment thriving in “the internet age”). Plus ça change, then? So it would seem. Geography and language affect little apart from the newly relevant notions of centrality and periphery; once again exile, internal or external, begins with alienation, violence, and trauma. Whatever means of communication they employ, expat Brits trading tips on where to obtain Marmite will not amount to a “literary diaspora,” whereas Santa Monica-based Christopher Isherwoods and Manhattan-bound Quentin Crisps of this world will, and not in the obvious way. Similarly, as long as they published in Russia, globally dispersed, digitally linked Russophone literati could go on perching wherever they fancied—before 02.24.22, that is. Diasporas and exile are back with a vengeance, replacing nuance and fluidity with a livid reality of a war of extinction, its barbed wire cruelly undercutting dreams of barrier-free wireless connections. Those interested in exilic literature, meanwhile, will find in Rubins’s collection outstanding contributions by David Bethea, Pamela Davidson, and Adrian Wanner, along with fine works by Katherine Hodgson and Andreas Schönle; students of diasporas, cultural centers, and peripheries will do well to consider Mark Lipovetsky’s and Kevin Platt’s essays while Rubins’s and Galin Tihanov’s framing pieces will not fail to stimulate much-needed thinking at a time when rampant archaism makes mockery of progress, enlightenment, and “global connectivity.”