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Since the 2008 recession, introspection has been in vogue. The boom in navel-gazing, performance, all a product of an era of ever-increasing pressure. Yet what might be seen as the culmination of this trend in the physical containment of lockdown has not been straightforward. Rather than a further folding inwards, we see an explosion of solidarity and protest movements, a reclamation of popular space and forms of association. This shift to solidarity as a response to a situation of intense pressure has shown the possibility for the world to be organised in entirely different ways. The pressures that fell disproportionately on the young – of debt, of technology – will no doubt look different beyond the plague days. Meanwhile, the reconfiguration of global centres of gravity are creating new forms of pressure as paradigms shift. Just as certain animals survive at high pressure – or indeed require high pressure in order to live – so this issue considers our pressurised moment, and the decompression, or lack thereof, to come.