The Tear Gas Lessons
Edward Escalon Jr
This project is an attempt to grapple with the things that I learned from being tear gassed by security forces during my fieldwork in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I call this project the “Tear Gas Lessons” because it is driven by the idea that tear gas is pedagogical. Tear gas is meant to teach us something about the state of things, and its deployment transmits certain affects.[1] The act of being tear gassed is a lesson in power and resistance. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick asks, “It is true that we can learn only when we are aware we are being taught?”[2] My answer to this question is this: the tear gas lessons were not obvious to me in the moment, and they certainly were not consensual. Nonetheless, I learned. I learned about how vulnerable my own body and psyche, and those of my interlocutors, are before the brute force of state violence. I learned that I hate tear gas, a lot. The knowledge of this hatred is something that I could only learn through the use of my own senses because “power is a thing of the senses.”[3] Most importantly, I learned that in spite of its use to disperse problematic crowds, tear gas also has the potential to solidify transnational bonds between seemingly disparate bodies.[4] What follows is an excerpt from one of these lessons.
The first time I ever experienced tear gas was during the summer of 2017. I had just finished my first year of course in my PhD program at the University of Toronto and my supervisor sent me there to see if fieldwork in the Central American country made sense for me. I was high on the ideas that I was learning about in my classrooms. My knowledge was accumulating, and I felt like I was developing a theoretical tool kit to help me understand the world. Phrases like austerity, neoliberalism, slow death, biopower, transnationalism, empire, and affect floated around in my head, and I was excited to see how they may map on to the Honduran context. I was about to commit the error of letting these theories and keywords apply “like dead effects imposed on an innocent world.”[5] It was the tear gas that stopped me in my tracks and forced me to reevaluate my approach. Here’s how it happened.
I was visiting the National Autonomous University of Honduras and accompanying Jonathan del Rio,[6] a local pastor who also worked as a professor in Spanish Language and Literature and directed an evangelical human rights observatory that he ran out of his church. On this particular day, all three of his professions collided into one. The university was abuzz with a spirit of protest. Under the direction of the Movimineto Estudiantil Universitario (University Student Movement), students had seized the means of instruction in response to the university administration’s attempts to introduce neoliberal reforms to the university’s governing structure. Classes stopped, classrooms and other university spaces were occupied, and the students held regular demonstrations at the main entrances of the university. These demonstrations were frequently met with heavy-handed repression on the part of Honduran security forces.
The students used classroom desks to barricade the entrances to university buildings.
On this day, as they often do, the demonstrations spilled out onto Boulevard Suyapa, a major thoroughfare in Tegucigalpa named after the patron saint of Honduras, la Virgen de Suyapa. In an act of solidarity with his students, and to provide pastoral care and assistance and advice as a human rights observer, Jonathan suggested that we take a walk to where students were protesting. Before we even got in sight of the protest, I was overwhelmed by a burning sensation in my eyes, nose, and throat. What is that? I asked, rather stupidly. Tear gas. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Jonathan seemed almost unphased by the presence of chemical weapons on the campus where he worked. As a tear gas newbie, I was overwhelmed. This was exactly the kind of activity that I had promised by home university that I would avoid. I tried to keep myself composed as we walked closer to the scene of the demonstration. With each step, the impact on my olfactory and respiratory systems grew. I was confused because I didn’t see any of the characteristic plumes of smoke associated with the tear gas deployment, yet my eyes, nose, and throat still burned.
As we got closer to the crowd of students, Jonathan directed my attention towards a young couple locked in a passionate embrace. They started kissing and Jonathan chuckled. Even in moments like this, there’s time for love. The public display of affection seemed to me to be an act of refusal.[7] Rather than dispersing, the bodies of these two students came together. Tear gas was in the air but so was love. As we arrived at Boulevard Suyapa, the overwhelming sensations provoked by the tear gas dissipated and were replaced by feelings of joy. I couldn’t help but feel giddy as I watched students dance in the street, their faces covered by t-shirts. Jonathan took out his phone and started live streaming the protest to the observatory’s Facebook account. He turned the camera towards me and asked me to explain to his viewers why I had come to Honduras. I was caught off guard but I managed to explain that I was an anthropologist of religion and that I was there because the protest was a religious experience. I was doing clumsy theory on the spot. In spite of the clumsiness, this description felt like the most sincere thing that I could say in the moment. The reverie didn’t last very long. After a few minutes, reinforcements dressed in anti-riot gear arrived and the street was filled once again with clouds of tear gas. As the students fled, they threw rocks towards the armored police officers, an action that was met with more canisters of tear gas.
Estudiantes encapuchados (masked students) occupy Boulevard Suyapa. The Virgin’s back is turned on the students.
Police in riot gear around following a confrontation with university students. The Virgin watches.
Tear gas poses an occupation hazard for journalists who cover police activities
[1] Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.
[2] Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg, and Michael Moon. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822384786
[3] Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822390404.
[4] Puar, Jasbir K. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822372530.
[5] Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822390404.
[6] A pseudonym.
[7] Audra Simpson. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376781.