LIFE MATTERS. The Human Condition in the Age of Pandemics (An Introduction)
LIFE MATTERS. The Human Condition in the Age of Pandemics (An Introduction)

Summary/Abstract: The world has recently experienced the ravages of the COVID-19epidemic and new, terrible wars. The pandemic and the wars now beingwaged show us how fragile human life is on our planet. The facts thatthe COVID-19 virus came originally from one or more animals that arepart of the human food chain, and that the viruses themselves are formsof life very different from plants and animals, have altered our perceptionof our place in the world. Wars fought in this changed biological contexthave also shown how precarious the balance of power is in what we havecome to see as a global humanity. Scholars in the fields of Humanitiesand Cultural Studies have risen to the occasion by focusing on the culturaleffects of biological and war-time violence-related catastrophes. In thisissue of RIAS focusing on the Americas and their influence on the world,we look at the implications of pandemics and wars, and human reactionsto similar threats in the past, such as the pandemic of the Spanish fluwhich decimated soldiers during World War I. And once again, literaturecomes to our rescue in the time of heightened angst, showing us pathsof the mind already present in American literature that may nudge usin a better direction. Existential homelessness, Buddhism, and meditation,also appear here as “life matters,” and that in the double sense:they are both matters of life and signals that life, and especially humanlife, must matter.

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