Introduction: We Didn't Know, and Other Fictions

The introduction to "Fictions of the Pandemic" proposes that the COVID pandemic be understood as a "portal" revealing widespread societal failures and missed opportunities. Editor Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan critiques dominant "fictions" that took hold during COVID, including the fantasy of universal solidarity and the alibi of ignorance ("we didn't know"). The special issue challenges scholars to reconsider critical methods of literary studies in the face of normalized, mass-disabling events. Examining diverse texts, including science fiction, autofiction, and film, the collected essays ultimately argue that pandemic fiction is an essential site of collective witnessing and visioning.