Editors' Note

Editors' Note Andie Silva and Shereen Inayatulla We want to begin this note by acknowledging that we live and work as immigrant settlers on Lenapehoking and to express our solidarity with Indigenous efforts to end oppression locally and globally. We understand that material action should always culminate in land back, and our acknowledgment therefore serves as a reminder to keep the struggle for collective liberation at the forefront of our daily lives. It is worthy of mention that we are writing this land acknowledgment and editors' note in the early days of 2024, and we wish to emphasize that it has now been several months since the contributions in this issue were completed. This lapse in time feels significant. At present, we find ourselves navigating profoundly mixed emotions related to a sustainable sociopolitical future. Yet, we hold dearly to visions of a world in which social and environmental justice are centered as tenets within the tireless collective pursuit of liberation. This vision is propelled by the revolutionary work of feminist thinkers—those included in this special issue and beyond—whose capacity for transforming hostile living conditions toward an equitable future is indomitable. This special issue, Pandemonium, reflects upon the ever-increasing attacks on women's, gender, and sexuality studies (WGS) programs and scholars on both micro and macro scales. The feminist labor, scholarship, and art encompassed in the pages ahead reflect a broad range of interventional activism, showcasing the myriad strategies employed to resist erasure and fight for social justice. As guest editors Tracey Jean Boisseau and Adrianna L. Ernstberger so poignantly describe in their introduction, while we must face the End Page 13 deeply damaging and long-lasting effects of recent far-right attacks, we may also find hope in the extent to which these attacks have galvanized feminist movements and prompted the formation of stalwart global coalitions. This issue is poised to serve as a valuable resource for readers invested in documenting and joining efforts to not just secure but reimagine the future of WGS within and beyond academic spaces. In particular, we appreciate this issue's framing of feminist praxis as a conversation both literally, as we see in the first section, and figuratively, through the manifestos, reviews, and artwork that follow. Pandemonium demonstrates the immeasurable value of placing affect, human experience, and ethnographic memory at the center of feminist struggles. We are moved by the personal reflections that guide the issue, exemplified so powerfully in Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom's concluding essay, which highlights care and wellness as forms of feminist labor that are too often downplayed or ignored. The title of this special issue reminds us that we are still in the midst of an unprecedented health crisis, which disproportionately burdens the global majority that is BIPOC, disabled, and poor populations. It is impossible to gloss over the lives being robbed by the pandemic and the relentless grief rooted in such loss. These irreversible tragedies are the markings of a virus taking hold under already oppressive conditions. The very fact that Pandemonium emerges from this horrifying shared reality reaffirms feminist-led efforts for equity and justice, reminding us also to resist universalizing approaches to our labor and activism. While it is crucial that we remain engaged in social coalition at the local level, we cannot survive and thrive without finding ways to center and amplify global knowledges, aspirations, and care networks. This issue demonstrates that the path to building a safe, equitable future must be anchored in what Trimita Chakma's manifesto beautifully describes as "solidarities across borders." We would like to express our gratitude to the guest editors of Pandemonium, Tracey Jean Boisseau and Adrianna L. Ernstberger, for materializing their brilliant vision in the pages of this issue. The labor they poured into planning, synthesizing, and editing this issue is truly commendable. Thank you to each and every contributor for sharing their work with WSQ audiences and to all of the reviewers of the pieces included here. We are continually grateful to the team at Feminist Press for their attention to detail at the level of production and distribution. In particular, we wish to thank editorial director Lauren Rosemary Hook, executive director Margot Atwell...