The Trials of the Gas Mask: An Object of Fumbling

Abstract

The Trials of the Gas Mask: An Object of Fumbling Nathan Schlanger (bio) Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling. —Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est” (1918) Owing to a missile attack on Israel, an emergency siren has been sounded. All residents of Israel must immediately put on their gas masks and close themselves off in their sealed room. Once the family has entered the room, a wet cloth must be placed along the bottom of the closed door, and the top part of the door must be sealed off with masking tape. All air conditioners must immediately be turned off. Check that children have their gas masks on correctly, and keep listening to the radio. —Israeli Radio, January/February 1991 It was during the Gulf War, when Israel came under threats of chemical annihilation and “went on the defensive,” that I discovered the gas mask to be an object. As it became increasingly credible and imminent, the unfathomable menace—“Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!”—was crucially rescaled to the toxic potency and dispersal pattern of law-abiding molecules and further presented as a localized problem toward which specific and concrete countermeasures could be devised, so that “all residents of Israel” could follow the radio broadcast and aim in concert for a sanctioned setting in which to domesticate “an ecstasy of fumbling” through the orderly execution of a standard procedure. So it was with the gas mask: the Gulf War transformed it from a vaguely morbid mental image into a facial object of survival. But to [End Page 275] be drafted in the nationwide defensive maelstrom as a life-saving object (and not, as it happened, a life-taking one) the real effectiveness of the gas mask was by no means sufficient—it had also to be effectively realized, and this in turn necessitated that confidence in its claimed capacities be gained, and competence in its appropriate performance mastered. In the partial, eclectic, and at times exaggerated “participant account” that follows, I propose to document some of trials the gas mask and I had to endure as it transformed to become my virtual pièce de résistance. I first recall some of the interfacing problems that accompany the gas mask, and the principles that it invokes when it works and when it does not. Dismayed by the fact that a number of unfortunate users died through misusing their gas mask, I then adopt a more polemical tone in order to prise out into the open—through a demasking trial—the various interests and considerations that underlie it. The objective verdict I (want us to) reach, finally, is that conceiving of the gas mask “as an object” makes it not only better to live with, but also better to think with. I. Interfacing Problems Mere Presence The purpose of the gas mask is to save lives when there is an alert. When that momentous occasion arises—usually in the dead of night—the sudden wailing of the sirens prompts me and my fellow residents of Israel to enact in vivo the cryptic instructions above, broadcast on the radio. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Exorcising evil spirits—Good advice from the well informed. Urgently, I check that the frail plastic sheets that pretend to insulate my window panes are still secured in place by reluctant strips of masking tape, and that the crevices at the bottom of my door are well dammed with soggy tea towels against a possible influx of noxious courants d’air. Turning to my gas mask, I assemble it out of its cardboard box (an important issue to which I will return) and duly put it on. Firmly holding its inner lower part against my jaw, I bring it up so that its two transparent gaps are level with my eyes. Stretching its binding straps over my head, I finally buckle them tight. Upon this masquerade I am more or less ready to face the worst—looking more than anything like a semipetrified gargoyle exorcising evil spirits with its abominable physiognomy, and feeling pretty miserable too (Figure 1). Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Intense and intensive interfacing. What distresses...