The geopolitics of disease prevention: Military analogies against COVID-19 in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and beyond

Abstract

Military metaphors have been used intensively and excessively against the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide since its outbreak in 2020. In this article, we consider “war” and “military” analogies as keywords to approach the pandemic culture by examining the use of war metaphors at the time of COVID-19 and its relationship with selective “war” memories in the first year of the global outbreak of the pandemic. Specifically, we underpin the heterogeneity of such use of metaphors and their relationships with geopolitics, collective memory, and nationalism. We examine the contexts in which these war frames against COVID-19 were articulated and their affective and discursive implications to geopolitics outside of a Western-centric context through two case studies in East Asia – Hong Kong’s bottom-up military analogies in the post-Anti-ELAB era and Taiwan’s biopolitical nationalism against China. Our discussion underscores the significance of contexts in considering the purpose and impact of military metaphors against COVID-19, and also other diseases and even disasters of all kinds in the future, by highlighting the geopolitical trajectories outside of North America and Europe, where regional war memories and military tensions are referenced to inform local definitions of security, safety, and securitization practices.