As this special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing goes to print, fear of the lifechanging and life-taking SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads worldwide faster than the virus itself. The volume’s very gestation has coincided with the tightening grip of the current global pandemic, unprecedented in its deadly, unstoppable spread, from which it will take the world months, if not years, to emerge. Planetary precarity, environmental degradation or ecoprecarity, and the precarious society or the “precariat”, already looming problems of the new millennium, and for long major areas of concern of researchers everywhere, have been overtaken by this invisible threat that has subjected the health of populations throughout the world to new levels of vulnerability and risk. The chimera of hope offered by a magic vaccination, elimination of the virus or its disappearance, is for many the only way to imagine a far off “new normal” as a new spike or second wave is anticipated, even as this issue of the journal is finalized. Among the perplexed – some even denying – and slow-moving governmental machineries, COVID-19 heightens new and unprecedented forms of precarity – in terms of the medical and human resources urgently needed to fight it and the anticipated economic recession which will follow, amplifying the already existing “great divide”, as Joseph Stiglitz (2015) puts it, between rich and poor, global south and global north, haves and havenots. In this totally unexpected context of an international pandemic of massive microbiological risk, the theme of this special issue – “Challenging Precarity” – gains heightened significance, not least because many of the debates and topics that are covered, based on existing theoretical and critical paradigms of this field of research, come to seem even more crucial at a time of the biggest crisis the world has faced since World War II. We are living through what is being called “the COVID-19 era” with a “magnified awareness of catastrophe, the sense of universal vulnerability and new brakes socially and culturally on the ways we live” (Slovic 2020, n.p.). There has been a global shift of research endeavour to prioritize projects that analyse the SARS-CoV-2 virus, to identify its behaviour in order to find a vaccine, examine its social and economic impacts, and assess its consequences in order to move forward with future planning. During the recent national lockdowns these and other issues have been debated in virtual conferences, like the international one held at Auro University in May 2020 on “Imagining the Post-Coronavirus World”, as research communities across the globe unite in trying to find solutions to the public health threat that COVID-19 represents: the threat that we will never not have the virus with us.

中文翻译：

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行星不稳定和大流行

随着《后殖民写作杂志》这期特刊的出版，人们对改变生命和夺去生命的 SARS-CoV-2 病毒的恐惧比病毒本身传播得更快。这本书的酝酿恰逢当前全球大流行的收紧，其致命的、不可阻挡的蔓延史无前例，世界需要几个月甚至几年的时间才能出现。行星的不稳定、环境退化或生态不稳定、不稳定的社会或“不稳定的”，新千年已经迫在眉睫的问题，长期以来一直是世界各地研究人员关注的主要领域，已经被这种无形的威胁所取代世界各地的人口面临新的脆弱性和风险水平。魔法疫苗提供的希望的幻想，对许多人来说，消灭病毒或消失是唯一的方法来想象一个遥远的“新常态”，因为预计会出现新的高峰或第二波，即使本期杂志已经定稿。在令人困惑（有些甚至否认）和行动缓慢的政府机构中，COVID-19 加剧了新的和前所未有的不稳定形式——就急需的医疗和人力资源以及随之而来的预期经济衰退而言，加剧了正如约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨 (Joseph Stiglitz, 2015) 所说的那样，已经存在的“巨大鸿沟”在富人和穷人之间、全球南方和全球北方之间、富人和穷人之间。在这种完全出乎意料的大规模微生物风险国际大流行的背景下，本期特刊的主题——“具有挑战性的不稳定”——具有更高的意义，尤其是因为所涵盖的许多辩论和主题，基于该研究领域现有的理论和批判范式，在世界自二战以来面临的最大危机之际显得更加重要。我们正在经历所谓的“COVID-19 时代”，“对灾难的认识更加深刻，普遍脆弱的感觉以及我们生活方式在社会和文化上的新刹车”（Slovic 2020，np）。全球的研究工作发生了转变，优先考虑分析 SARS-CoV-2 病毒的项目，以确定其行为以寻找疫苗，检查其社会和经济影响，并评估其后果以推进未来规划。在最近的全国封锁期间，这些和其他问题在虚拟会议上进行了辩论，