Description
Constituting approximately 25% of the “non-lethal” weapons market, tear gas has become a popular tool for enforcing political control. This paper will explore the weaponization of tear gas for the purposes of disciplining policed bodies, specifically Black Lives Matter protesters in the US. Drawing upon ideas of race, empire, identity, war, and biopower as they coalesce within metropolitan protest sites, this paper argues that such themes continue to have salience as colonial logics, power structures, and hierarchies are maintained within the modern era - in this case between the state and black citizens. With circumscribed (othered) populations rendered disposable, this paper highlights a specific manner in which tear gas has been employed by state authority - against protesting black Americans/those protesting in solidarity with black advancement - to show how this weapon simultaneously dehumanizes and governs. Through investigating the systematic and structural deployment of tear gas, the dynamics between citizenship status, history, and power that serve to justify the use of this chemical agent become clearer. As tear gas, far from a benign technological development, continues to change modes of governance and methods for activism across the globe, an analysis of its racialized employment is imperative.
