You are never quite able to forget the first time you are teargassed. If you’re fortunate, you see the tear gas first being deployed and have enough time to make sure you avoid the canisters’ ballistic paths (police often aim for your head when firing them). Immediately after, the loud hiss of the gas pouring out of the cans drowns out every other sound while white clouds rapidly fill the air and engulf you, obscuring your vision and forcing their way into your body through your lips, eyes, ears, and nostrils. The sharp burning in your lungs and sinuses brought on by the gas leaves with you with the sharp impression that you’re not getting enough oxygen, causing you to desperately gasp for more breath; this only allows more of the gas to pour in, increasing its effects. The experience invariably leaves an affective imprint on you, as you become severely aware of your embodied dependence on the atmosphere around you precisely at the moment it becomes toxic and acidic.
The images of people’s uprisings that circulate in various media are often characteristically marked by these curious white clouds; they have become the visual hallmark of social struggles the world over. As a weapon, tear gas is distinct from other forms of repression in that it acts on the scale of environmental conditions rather than on specific individuals. Police batons, fists, rubber bullets, water cannons, guns, and pepper spray all intend to inflict violence onto particular bodies in confined spaces, meaning to distribute harm in a more or less directed way. In contrast, tear gas is deployed spatially and atmospherically across generalized territories; it is a weapon that fundamentally transforms the conditions in which the protests themselves take place. The use of tear gas ultimately manifests as an attack on the human condition, a weaponization of the atmosphere upon which we all rely, an offensive against the circumstances that make life possible in the first place.