Stench atmospheres: policing, affect, and colonial boomeranging in Palestine/Israel

Abstract The weaponization of smell has sparked a growing interest in the studies of warfare, policing, and the senses. This paper examines one peculiar mode of olfactory weaponization, Skunk Water, an Israeli-invented policing technology developed to pacify protests with a nauseating and sticky smell. By highlighting connections between material, affective, and political dimensions of Skunk Water policing, the paper argues more attention should be paid to spatial dynamics of racial violence, particular as they manifest through producing olfactory environments, or what we call stench atmospheres. Specifically, the paper unpacks two interrelated aspects of stench atmospheres: first, how Skunk Water policing produces affective atmospheres by materially marking, disrupting, terrorizing, and humiliating—or “enveloping”—racialized and segregated Palestinian communities, and second, how these affective-material atmospheres, along with the “deodorization” logics they entail, transform when they boomerang from the occupied Palestinian territory back inside Israel. The paper thus offers nuanced insights regarding contemporary (colonial) policing techniques and their circulation, particularly the spatiotemporal modalities of (in)security that work by engulfing racialized communities in stench atmospheres and the underlying logics of atmospheric contamination and deodorization they enact.