Poison: The politics behind pesticides and chemical weapons

Compounds labelled as chemical weapons and pesticides share common active chemical ingredients, which function as nerve agents to humans and insects whether they are considered a form of warfare or a farming staple.

Why are such substances considered acceptable and necessary in the context of agriculture while deemed exceptional and unnecessary in the context of international politics? This was the question animating the article “Extermination and Excess: Martial Economies of Poison,” which has recently been published in Security Dialogue.

To answer the question, the study intertwines the histories of pesticides and chemical weapons with the philosophical insights of Georges Bataille (1897-1962). This leads to an analysis of the role of poison, as a shared category that encompasses both pesticides and chemical weapons, in international politics.

‘Radically disturbing mainstream distinctions between pesticides and chemical weapons, … this article questions the wording of the chemical weapons convention and draws attention to many victims of poison who are currently overlooked.’

Across the scales of the state and individual, and across distinctions between war and peace, and weapon and technology, poison, the article argues, is not primarily characterized by being an excessive response, but by being a response to excess. In other words, rather than an understanding that using poison is always “too much,” poison is politically characterized by being a response to that which is deemed “too much.”

Viewing poison as a response to excess does not negate the cruelty expressed by its use or the unnecessary suffering caused by it. Rather, it points to the utility of poison; how it is politically effective and useful for achieving and maintaining certain social orders.

Drawing parallels between Bataille’s description of fascism and contemporary fascist leaders’ use of nerve agents, notably Vladimir Putin, the article describes how poison aligns with fascist desires for cleanliness through the extermination of human organisms deemed irredeemable. A focus on extermination desires continues in the article’s historical examination of fumigation (the use of poison in gas form) as a distinct mode of pest elimination encompassing the citrus empires of California and culminating in the Holocaust which took fumigation to a new, unprecedented scale. What comes to the forefront here is how fumigation as a method of death is characterized by its utility: fumigation has historically been a practical answer to killing as a logistical issue.

To better understand the desires and (cruel) logics behind the use of poison, the article turns to metaphors and ideas of gardening as expressed in thinking characteristic not only of the Eugenics movement and Nazism, but also of modern state-building. Here, I highlight how the allure of poison can be similar across different scales, from nation-building to the everyday; from genocides to strawberry fields.

To elucidate how poison comes to act as a tool in economies of growth, competition, and death of organisms both flora and fauna, the last part of the article engages Bataille’s writing on a ”general economy.” Focusing on responses to what Bataille calls “the pressure exerted in all directions by life,” this Bataillian engagement provides an explanation for why excess demands a response, and highlights connections between desires for extermination and notions of waste and utility which animate the politics behind modern nation-building.

Radically disturbing mainstream distinctions between pesticides and chemical weapons, the research of this article questions the wording of the chemical weapons convention and draws attention to many victims of poison who are currently overlooked.