Description
The global tear gas market is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Various political regimes have employed tear gas to repress dissent and curb freedom of assembly across the world, from Palestinian supporters in Paris to workers in Dhaka to women in Tehran. This paper will assess the weaponization of this chemical agent by state power to discipline already marginalized groups. Through using insights from postcolonial theory, this paper will evaluate the ways in which tear gas has helped underpin particular power dynamics and functioned as a tool of governance. As colonial logics and methods of violence persist into the present, tear gas can be used as a vehicle to understand the exercise of political power over certain populations. With circumscribed (“othered”) populations rendered deviant, threatening, or even subhuman, this paper sheds light on a specific manner in which tear gas has been utilized to manage and dominate protesting bodies. The routine and punitive employment of atmospheric violence by law enforcement increasingly blurs the line between protecting public safety and enforcing political control. Tear gas should not be regarded as a benign technology but rather as a repressive policing tool that will remain popular as well as alter methods of governance and avenues for resistance / activism in the future.
