The dashboard pandemic

Abstract

The dashboard is the most striking cultural artefact of the current coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. It reveals the fraught pandemic politics which are centred around territorial approaches on the scale of the state rather than international cooperation, democratic liberation, and local care. The dashboard is a biopolitical technology of anxiety, prompting national states of emergency. This narrow approach to framing the COVID-19 crisis is rooted in military-style pandemic preparedness planning that became fashionable in the 21st century. However, there is mounting evidence that this approach does not adequately address the uneven and unjust geographies of the present.