The Trials of the Gas Mask: An Object of Fumbling
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.
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).
Intense and intensive interfacing.
What distresses me is the threat of being gassed, of course, but also the very protection that I wear against such an eventuality. It is true that I overcame long ago my visceral repulsion to the gas mask’s nightmarish evocations, and I learned after a few surprise [End Page 276] repetitions to grope in darkness and in panic for the salvation it is wont to procure. But still, the “brute” presence of this object on my face troubles me: For one thing, I am forced to take off my glasses in order to make room for it, and this not only gives me psychosomatic headaches but also makes me blind as a bat—with my hearing already swamped by the strident sirens, and my organs of taste and of smell thoroughly obstructed by the mask, I am left virtually senseless during these sensitive moments. Then, I am worried that, however cautiously I inhale, my beard will endanger the airproof tightness of the mask and let gas seep in. Lastly, and least seriously, I am constantly irritated by strands of my unruly hair being caught in the buckles of the straps and torn away whenever I mask and unmask (Figure 2).
So as intimate and intense as it may be, my interface with the gas mask is far from intangible. Even as (and while) I make good [End Page 277] usage of it, the object proves to be both over- and underdetermined. This is so, I think, because it was specified to fit a hypothetical mean, and not a comprehensive range, of targeted crania: allowing for diverse encephalic capacities, the gas mask requires its binding straps to be recustomized at each masking (with the effect I have drawn upon my hairstyle), while at the same time its shape somehow manages to exclude or embarrass the bearded and bespectacled variants of my sort.
These (and other) “existential” difficulties may sound trivial and inconsequential now, but let me assure you that there and then they did nothing to alleviate the anguish of the situation. On the contrary, they set me wondering just how the gas mask would fare as an ultimate solution, if it ever came to that.
Matters of Principle
The purpose of the gas mask is to save lives when there is a gas attack. To promote survival under such adverse conditions, any object-solution has to satisfy two stringent requirements: that of preventing contaminated air from reaching me, and at the same time that of providing me with breathable air. The prevention of harmful breathing is achieved by means of a device that stretches over my respiratory openings to restrict inhaling and exhaling to dedicated one-way apertures—i.e., a rubber mask. The provision of [End Page 278] breathable air, for its part, can be achieved through two distinct operating principles which it is instructive to compare.
One principle, followed by the aqualung, is that of substitution: the normal breathing cycle is shunted in favor of an alternative source of previously stored air. When I go deep-sea diving, say, I am connected to a large and rather cumbersome contraption that affords me a limited supply of air and therefore of breathing time. Still, I am quite at ease with these limitations: having introduced it myself, I know that the air the aqualung feeds me is of impeccable quality, and that it will remain so until its eventual, and predictable, exhaustion. All I have to worry about then is to monitor its decreasing quantity—an eminently measurable and representable variable. In effect, knowing the initial amount of pressurized air and the rate by which I consume it, I can easily extrapolate from the dial of the airflow valve on the tank—and that of the watch on my arm—just how much air/time have I left for enjoying the aquatic scenery.
The gas mask relies on a different principle to provide me with breathable air, that of interposition. Here the normal breathing cycle, far from being by-passed, is simply mediated by an additional strategic phase—a filter—that renders the ambient air harmless. So when willy-nilly I go “gas masking” against a possible chemical attack, I have at my disposition an accessory that enables me to draw upon and thereby decontaminate an inexhaustible supply of air. This operating principle is obviously advantageous, but not in every respect. Recall that with the aqualung it is known and acknowledged from the start that the surrounding water is unbreathable, so that one has to (and I can) be confident of the air that flows from the substitute source. No such certainties are possible with the gas mask, for in resolving the problem of quantity, the filter has created a problem of quality—or, rather, of its perception. Indeed, that the ambient air be foul (or sweet) is not an impediment for the gas mask (which is just as well), but then nor is it a condition for its operation. Because this intermediation is unconditional, not to say indifferent, I cannot tell with the gas mask on if there is any harmful gas in my sealed room, and (a distinct and equally urgent question) whether the mask will really save me from it.
Gulf Designs
With these remarks on the interfacing practices and operating principles of the gas mask, we reach the question of its design. To discuss the gas mask in these terms, I make use of the thought-provoking concepts and approaches provided by the American psychologist [End Page 279] Donald Norman in his entertaining book The Psychology of Everyday Things. With unintended pertinence in his choice of words, Norman identified two major “gulfs” that separate the everyday thing and the everyday user: that of execution, and that of evaluation. 1 As it happens, the operating principle invoked by the gas mask to provide air—that of interposition—is such that its application does not create any gulf of execution between my physical and my mental aspirations. For the gas mask to work all I have to do is to put it on and breathe—which is certainly what I would have done anyway.
But the very perfection of this solution constitutes its flaw. Breathing is such a natural activity, and the gas mask matches it (by principle) with such indifference as to the quality of the air it mediates, that I find myself at a loss to figure out whether it works at all! This discrepancy—between what is actually performed by the object and what is perceived of its performance—is the gulf of evaluation, and in the case of the gas mask this breach is as wide as that of execution is narrow.
Both the rubber mask and the filter—responsible, respectively, for the prevention and provision of air—are difficult to evaluate. To begin with the rubber mask, there are two factors that may keep it from restricting and controlling my intake of air: either the mask itself is faulty (and there, incidentally, its black color impedes the discovery of eventual cracks or tears in the fabric), or it is I who have improperly installed it on my (bearded) face. There is an officially condoned way to find out, but it is crude indeed: With the mask on, I block the inflow aperture with my palm and inhale as vigorously as possible; if by the time I am blue in the face no air has seeped through the thus-created vacuum, the rubber mask is supposedly faultless and correctly installed.
A more sophisticated approach is called for when assessing the filter, because beneath its superficial simplicity (and because of it) it harbors difficulties. While relying on the well-known principle of input -> process -> output, this “black box” familiarity is somehow offset by the principle of “indifferent interposition”: provided the output is breathable, there is no way for me to infer the quality of the input, nor the extent (if at all) to which it has been processed. This sheer opacity has occasioned such distress in missile-struck Israel that the pharmaceutical industry saw fit (and found it financially rewarding) to launch a dedicated “filter tester” on the market. I approach, with my gas mask on, a small phial of a harmless [End Page 280] chemical; if I feel offended by an acrid smell of bananas, then the filter is O.K.!
“Surely there is an error here,” you exclaim. “This is not logical at all: this ‘filter tester’ tells you that the filter is not clogged, since it lets the smell of bananas in—but doesn’t that tell you that the filter doesn’t work?!?” Well no, it doesn’t. The explanation of this apparent paradox is that there are in fact two chemicals in the phial, which together are odorless. When they pass through a working filter, the molecules of one chemical (which resemble those of gas) get trapped and arrested, and only the molecules of the other chemical (which, when alone, smell of bananas) reach my nose. By being odorless at the input end and smelly at the output, this clever concoction reverses and thereby also simplifies the aspired situation (foul air kept out, and pure air allowed in). So rather than spending many frustrating hours with a smelly phial stuck to my filtered nose, wondering with mounting incertitude “Do I smell anything? Gewalt! Wasn’t that a whiff of bananas?”, I have here an unambiguous correspondence: when I positively smell bananas, I can be confident that my filter does work, but when “Yes, we have no bananas” (as goes the song), then I know that no, my filter does not filter!
A Murderous Contradiction
This lighter note apart, the situation remains gloomy. Whereas, as discussed earlier, I am acutely aware of the presence of the gas mask on my face, I remain uncertain as to its performance once there. Because the gas mask gives no feedback, it may be properly used and still remain useless. And when it is improperly used, it can be worse than useless—it can become lethal.
The requirements of prevention and provision, we already know, are taken care of by a rubber mask and a filter. Well, for the whole gas mask to be a life saving-object, it is not enough for each of these two principles/elements to be successful at its respective task—it is also vital that they be synchronized to work together as one, and not one against the other!
Attaching the filter to the gas mask.
Again, it is the filter that can cause devastating disharmony. Being an input-output device, it has accordingly two opposing apertures. One, on the output end, connects with the rubber mask and allows the inflow of (hopefully) processed air. The other, on the input end, has free access to draw on the ambient air. Now for various reasons (to which we will come back), these two apertures are originally covered: side A (the filtered output) is closed by a lid that must be unscrewed in order to fit the filter on the rubber mask; side B (the unfiltered input) is sealed by a plastic plug, which should be [End Page 281] taken off before use (Figure 3). You can see now the potential pitfall. One cover (side A) must be taken off, while the other (side B) only should! And if the user omits to remove this little plug while wearing the gas mask, then the assembled pair of principles/elements are not merely undermined, they are at loggerheads: The rubber mask prevents all air inflow except that coming from the filter, but the filter, being plugged, cannot provide any air at all for the increasingly hysterical user to breathe!
Thus, by its mere inopportune presence, an unassuming plastic plug has managed to transform a life-saving object into a life-taking one (and that, without gas ever being around!). As a direct result of this contradiction, a number of unfortunate users—mostly either children or elderly—have simply and stupidly choked to death.
II. Demasking Trials
The Pandora Plug
We have not exhausted all the difficulties encountered and occasioned by the gas mask, but we have nonetheless accumulated enough to lead us toward an understanding of the object as a [End Page 282] whole—when it poses problems, and when it does not. In that respect, the tragedy of the plug is an excellent starting point. On the one hand, it can be unanimously agreed that there is a problem there, and that whatever went wrong must urgently be identified and, if possible, rectified. On the other hand, what is a seemingly straightforward accident (the plug, after all, was simply not removed) proves to have many successive and complementary and corollary causes, and their Rashomon-like unraveling will give us a more comprehensive perspective on the whole affair. While I make casual use of courtroom expressions to pursue this investigation, my intention is not at all to prosecute or to remonstrate. Rather, I use this tragic problem and the extraordinary circumstances in which it came to light as a means to track down all those implicated in the trials of the gas mask, and to document their involvement.
Quite naturally, the first to be accused are the unfortunate users themselves. This time they clearly deserve it, for they are the ones who, through their inaction, have caused their own deaths. Furthermore, their nonremoval of the critical plug is “illegal,” and known to be so: a sticker urging “Remove the plug before use!” is stuck on the filter, an official leaflet with detailed instructions is joined with the gas mask upon its distribution, and all the tabloids have published their own detachable illustrated versions of the instructions. Better still, a thorough video demonstration (subtitled in a babel of languages, including sign language) is broadcast on television whenever there is an alert. Thus, overruling any possible claims for ignorance, the victims are found guilty of disobedience in their (mis)use of the gas mask.
But in fact, the users’ failure to comply with instructions only partly accounts for their deaths. Far from confirming their guilt, this swamping profusion of rehashed directives (at times inconsistent and incomprehensible) points us in another direction: it indicates that (using Donald Norman’s terms) the relation between “information in the head” (the user) and “information in the world” (the object) is heavily unbalanced, to the detriment of the former. 2 We already know that it is up to the users to activate the gas mask with their anxious breathing—but here we must recognize that the object is very efficient in the execution of its function. We also know, with regard to the evaluation of this function, that it is up to the users to make increasingly frantic and impressionistic assessments—but here again we may accept that no sensing devices to [End Page 283] indicate the gas mask’s working condition (such as the aqualung’s dials) have yet been developed, and that, for example, the tried and tested method of having caged canaries signal the presence of gas through their sudden demise is no longer “politically correct.”
Granted all this, it is still unacceptable that it is the users of the gas mask who have also to secure their own competent performance in its most critical aspects. The simple task of removing the plug should never have been left to their discretion, obedience, or memory—it is the object that should have been given that responsibility!
Beyond Design
Thus, without totally exonerating the victims of the gas mask, we discover another guilty party—its anonymous designers. First, the designers failed to act on the assumption that normally competent and well-instructed users will be easily distracted out of their wits and into negligence by the very abnormal circumstances under which the gas mask is to be used. Next (and like the users), they cannot claim ignorance in this respect, for already in the inaugural days of chemical warfare witnessed by Wilfred Owen (and certainly in the Second World War) many unnecessary deaths could be attributed to that damned little plug. Last, and worst of all, the problem they have failed to counteract with an adequate solution is in fact of their own making.
Three possible interlocks to compel the removal of the murderous plug.
Such a solution is by no means impossible. The designers could have followed Donald Norman’s suggestions and incorporated in the gas mask its own operating cues (which would enable the wearer to distinguish between proper and improper usage), forcing functions (which would physically prohibit misuse) and interlocks (which would compel critical operations to take place in a planned and immutable sequence)! 3 What could be more foolproof (and here I am giving a piece of advice) than to construct the filter in such a way that, for example, its side A (output) lid can be unscrewed, and the filter fitted to the mask, only after the side B plug has been removed!? (See Figure 4.)
The failure of successive generations of gas mask designers to foresee and prevent such accidents is both real and rectifiable, and yet, again, it is not exclusive. To start with, it is not always profitable to condemn the experts for their alleged misdeeds, because we run the risk of perpetuating two concomitant fallacies: that only the designers are implicated when there is a problem (and [End Page 284] then everything/everyone else is immaterial), and that the designers are implicated only when there is a problem (and the rest of the time they are irrelevant). To proceed on such premises would result not only in a possible miscarriage of justice, but also, much more harmful for our purposes, in our losing touch with the object of contention. In effect, with the experts on the defensive, the whole issue would be immediately taken to their own home grounds where it would be abstracted with esoteric notions and universal laws, incarnated on drawing boards and in workshops, and then [End Page 285] transferred to experimental gas chambers behind whose glass partition the tribunal would be invited to witness how well the gas mask really fares. It can be expected that upon this artificial in vitro demonstration nothing would be found to have been wrong with the masks in the first place!
But this unwelcome deflection apart, there is another reason not to have the designers carry all the blame. The act of prosecution has itself pointed out that the plug problem is well known and yet remains uncorrected, and that it was created while solving others. As in the users’ case, this seemingly damning evidence can be upturned in favor of the designers: it suggests that there may well be some requirements (long-lasting and compelling enough) that make the plug’s existence essential and (at the same time) the problems that it might cause invisible.
On Purpose
To find out what these requirements might possibly be, we need to identify the purpose of the plug. Note that, surprisingly perhaps, this is the first time that the question really arises. When the users did not take the plug off, questions of norms and obedience were invoked, but not reasons as such. When the designers put it on, what was at stake was the competence of the designers, not that of the plug. Now, however, now that the plug and the specifications that allegedly underlie it are appealed to, the seemingly naive question “Why the plug?” becomes extremely relevant—to excuse the designers, and to reveal a new culprit to be tried.
Let us agree at the outset that our inquiries about the plug’s purpose will be directed toward the gas mask itself, and not its designers. To have the defendants provide and corroborate their own alibi is bad legal practice, and furthermore we risk thereby another unnecessary diversion. A well-meaning designer might answer along these lines: “Repeated laboratory experiments have conclusively shown that the active components of the filter could, under certain conditions and in the long run, have their efficacy impaired by contact with dust particles and other elements in the atmosphere. To avoid this, it is imperative that the filter’s apertures be sealed by a plug or a lid when not in use.” This statement may be correct, but it does not constitute the answer we seek: it reduces the purpose of the plug to the sealing of apertures, and it leads us to assume that the plug exists solely as a specific solution directly connected to the obvious goal of the gas mask—which is far from being the case.
In effect, it is difficult to substantiate these reasonable assumptions when we consult the object itself. On the contrary, we can [End Page 286] rule out as irrelevant the commonsensical belief that the plug somehow contributes to the life-saving functions of the gas mask. To the best of my understanding, there is nothing in the plug’s existence that helps the gas mask achieve its primordial functions; and conversely, there is nothing in the various difficulties associated with the prevention and provision of air that requires a plug!
If this irrelevance is as I portray it, we must face the implications: the gas mask—as an object—is neither exclusively dedicated to its noble objective, nor exempt from the promotion of others! Now, given the vital interests it is meant to secure under such dramatic and constraining conditions, the corruptible nature of the gas mask appears scandalous indeed. Let us, however, quickly come to terms with what is probably one of the most mundane and basically unavoidable (arte)facts of life. We have seen all along that several solutions of principle were available to most problems, and furthermore that their application or implementation takes in practice many different forms, so that the gas mask I talk about here—the one I used in Israel during the Gulf War—is and can only be one of many possible others. This leads to the following propositions. First, that such as it is, the object incorporates elements, aspects, or manners of being that—judged by the criteria of its ostensible raison d’être—seem superfluous. Next, that these elements (etc.) are open to some variation and choice. And last, that when these superfluous elements are judged by criteria other than those declared or explicit, they may well prove to be advantageous.
Nature morte —The items of the gas mask, their containing cardboard box, and the sticker that seals it.
So between the idea of the gas mask and the object itself, there lies of necessity a margin, potentially accessible to being “interested”—and it is by consulting the gas mask and its related paraphernalia that we stand a better chance of apprehending it. Upon this scrutiny a suspicion about the plug (which the designer’s answer made impossible) can be confirmed: The problem it covers is not singular or specific, but rather general and symptomatic. To understand “Why the plug?” we need to go on asking—Why does the filter come with its apertures closed in the first place? Why are its sides marked with various dates and numbers? Why is it set in its own plastic envelope, just like the rubber mask, the atropine syringe (against nerve gas), the purification powder (against mustard gas), and the batch of five gauze pads (to brush the powder off the skin) that come with it? And finally, why are all these items kept and eventually distributed as a kit in a sturdy cardboard box, and why is this box sealed with a sticker that vividly commands “DO NOT OPEN”? (See Figure 5.) [End Page 287]
From Machiavellian Conspiracy
My answer to this (tendentious) series of questions/observations is the following: Being such as it is, the whole “kit” of the gas mask and each of its “items” can be better stored and preserved from damage and decrepitude, and their individual shelf-life better maintained, when they are kept beneath various covers and plugs and monitored through transparent plastic sheaths and imprinted batch numbers—so that if any of them expires or is found defective, it (and it alone) can be replaced at minimal financial, material, or logistical costs.
I think we have now identified those requirements (long-lasting and compelling enough) that made the plug’s existence essential and the problems that it might cause invisible: the superfluous/ advantageous margin inevitably allowed by the gas mask (because it is an object) has been deliberately filled with the extraneous considerations of conservation and control. If so, some of the blame is to be shifted away from those who designed the gas mask, and toward the military administrations and national security policy-making bodies who commissioned it in the first place!
This formidable candidate culprit—henceforth “the establishment”—is the one that will occupy us from now on. In accusing it, however, particular caution should be exercised: it is both tempting and gratifying to blame the establishment for its innate and innumerable [End Page 288] faults, but to build a firm and pertinent case we need to overcome the urge of indiscriminate and prejudiced bashing. On the contrary—to discover where the guilt of the establishment lies in this affair, we must first find out what it is innocent of.
Thus, as convincing and convicting as the evidence may appear, we cannot accuse the establishment of having commissioned the gas mask in conservable and controllable format merely to inscribe therein its own Weltanschauung and propagate its private interests. It is true that having the gas mask such as it is enables the establishment to defuse disputes over its claimed indispensability, and to refute criticisms as to its own apparent lethargy. It is truer still that having the gas mask as it is fills the establishment’s routine existence with a flurry of rewarding activities: recall that it takes laboratories, functionaries, accountants, and ministerial subcommittees to conceive of gas masks, and then production plants, assembly workers, transport facilities, and storage bases to realise them. And once they are there, it takes another cohort of guardians and testers, and clerks, forms, document shredders, filing cabinets, and mainframe computers in order to keep them. And to prompt these into action it takes politicians to set policies, generals to generate orders, noncommissioned officers to bark them, and masses of conscripts to execute them. (And to have those. . . .)
But while the procession of those who thus prosper and profit can go on ad infinitum, we cannot conclude that from their very conception gas masks exist only to serve as “masking-artefacts” to legitimize and perpetuate the establishment’s insidious powers. To do so would be to confuse what are admittedly beneficial “side effects” with original motives, which I believe to be on the whole rather commendable—in fact, too much so.
To Consensual Closure
In our zeal, we would have accused the establishment of conceiving an object in its own image without having first established whether the attributes in question are in any way or at all indicting! Once the possibility that they may not be is granted and considered, it becomes evident that in normal times all the parties concerned do have their best interests served by the gas mask being such as it is.
For one thing, gas masks can be used as a political resource, on both domestic and international fronts. Being conservable and controllable, they can be publicized or disavowed, placating or menacing, distributed or withheld at the will of their democratically elected manipulators. [End Page 289]
Also, the electors—the tax-paying general public—stand to gain. Being conservable and controllable, gas masks do not pose any unnecessary economic burden for them to bear, while at the same time their dependable presence effectively exorcises or alleviates possible war phobias—along the lines of “If worst comes to worst, heaven forbid, we still have our gas masks to save us!”
And the gas masks too are delighted with this state of affairs. Tightly plugged and smugly sealed in their cardboard boxes, neatly stacked in their galvanized storage sheds, they are thus best protected against the ravages of decomposition—be these induced by Nature or (more likely) by humans. Just imagine their sorry fate, had they been made accessible to the notoriously corrosive “general public” upon its birth (or handed out as the epitome of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony). Put up to adorn Army and Navy Surplus stores in Brooklyn or Porte de Clignancourt, put on whenever malodorous chores are to be performed or bals masqués attended, they would soon be put down irredeemably dismantled, dissected, disemboweled, indeed desecrated! The extent to which gas masks are useful or useless can be debated—but we can rest assured that they are not (mis)use-proof!
So, upon that evidence, everyone appears to be genuinely content with the gas mask being such as it is—except, of course, for those who died of it (and us, who seem to stall in our attempt to find out why). To recapitulate and summarize the various arguments presented so far, let me call upon Aristotle’s well-known discussion of causality. The plug, implicated for its presence, is undeniably the material cause of the victims’ suffocation—but being merely a piece of plastic, there is nothing to say either for or against it. The users, implicated for their disobedience, are the efficient cause of their own deaths—but for not removing the plug they plead “temporary insanity.” The designers, implicated for their incompetence, are the formal cause of the plug—but for having put it on they plead “force majeure.” And now, our attempts to implicate the establishment (for providing the long-lasting and compelling requirements that made the plug both essential and invisible) seem to flounder on the unassailable plea of “vox populi”! Indeed, having set the final cause of the gas mask, the establishment threatens to leave us with only fate and philosophical resignation to account for the tragedy—was it not Aristotle himself who specified of the final cause that it is “the good par excellence and the goal of other beings; little matters if it is said of it that it is the Good itself, or the apparent good”? 4 [End Page 290]
III. Objective Verdict
More Evidence to Consider
Before we let our favorite scapegoat escape scot-free with a humiliating verdict of “no case to answer,” we still have some evidence left to consider. This evidence will not, of course, challenge Aristotle’s maxim per se—it will only show how regrettable it is that the establishment chose to “objectify” it on the gas mask.
Consider first the sticker affixed to the cardboard box of the gas mask “kit” (Figure 5). To understand why it so conspicuously ordains “DO NOT OPEN (until told to do so by the competent authorities . . .)” we need to go back to the last weeks of 1990, when the unanimous decision to “go on the defensive” forcibly “outed” the gas masks from their secluded nirvana to face the yearning masses. What was there, there and then, to keep the “general public” (their hands as yet untrembling and their living rooms still free of gases) from defacing the gas masks and subjecting them to the host of secondary usages we know them capable of? While repeatedly admonishing in all possible media and manners that no harm must befall the objects, the establishment also knows that such calls upon our conscience alone are rarely sufficient. Hence the sticker, infiltrated into the privacy of our homesteads and delegated there to instil respect and reproduce a semblance of storage-shed security.
Whatever success this sticker had did not come solely from its vivid red-on-white coloring (emulating highway semiotics to prompt and extend our supposedly ingrained respect of motoring conventions), and less still from its verbal message, given that the enunciated threats of judiciary action against “he (or she) who opens this package” are as pathetic as they are unenforceable. No, it is the texture of the sticker, as much as its textuality, that ensures “good conduct.” Strategically stuck to the seam of the box with high-quality glue, impossible to peel off and then unobtrusively replace, the sticker acts as a moral seal. Intact, it visibly vouches for its unviolated contents. Torn, it is a glaring stigma of irresponsible infraction.
Consider, however, the costs incurred by this labeled “moral restraint.” Deprived of previews, checks, or simulations, gas mask owners suddenly became the frantic first-time users of a still alien and baffling object when those resounding Scud salvos and cries of “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!” heralded the (January 18) night of the vernissage. [End Page 291]
The Damning Directive
And—believe you me—stickers were ripped off in the ensuing “ecstasy of fumbling,” and plastic covers torn, and apertures uncovered, and the whole contraption urgently put together and put on to save lives—and also to initiate worries about proper installation, insulating capacities, operating principles, the workings of the filter, the absence of glasses, and, yes, the presence of gases.
Consider that this was also the moment when we noticed (through those stamped batch numbers and dates so useful for promoting conservation and control) that our filters were actually made in 1976, the atropine injections concocted in 1978, and the whole kits assembled in 1981! Demoralized, we suddenly realized that our gas masks had a past (of which we wanted to know nothing), and we wondered, with impotent consternation, “Has the gas mask been around too long (to save our lives)?” Turning to the politico-military establishment for appeasement and advice, we quickly found out that its fears were complementary to ours, but also diametrically opposite. It was not the dire present, but rather the still darker future that might lie ahead, that made them wonder, “Will the gas mask be around long enough (to save our lives)?” Whereas we cast doubt on the extent to which the life-saving value of the gas mask can be maintained over time, the establishment was concerned that its life saving-value will be transient with its usage!
Consider that when we were finally released from this traumatic interface by the all-clear sirens and the mellifluous voice of an I.D.F. spokesman, we were required (at least initially) to re-decompose the gas mask into its constituent parts, reseal each of them in its respective envelope, and replace them all in the cardboard box “for further use.” And worst of all, consider in this light the directive given in paragraph 4, page 2, of the gas mask manual provided by the manufacturer: “Keep the lid and the plug for re-use after an attack”! 5 Besides being preposterous (picture yourself surviving a gas attack with nothing better to do than screw back lids and plugs!), this demand is also—we know at our cost—downright murderous.
Double Fault
So, all things considered, I think we know now what is it that the victims of the plug fell to: they died because the survival of the object was promoted at the expense of their own. The lessons of [End Page 292] our misguided quest for Machiavellian conspiracies being still fresh in mind, it is clear that this lethal emphasis is a deplorable consequence, and definitely not an instance of willful maliciousness or contemptuous disregard for human life. What the establishment can and should be blamed for in this lamentable affair is (a) having grossly miscalculated with its own good intentions, and (b) having grown overconfident with the artefacts of its own creation. Let me elaborate on these two—after all, so human—faults.
The first error is the establishment’s eagerness to be so accommodating. It is not the fact that gas masks were commissioned to have their superfluous/advantageous margin filled with the considerations of conservation and of control that is, as such, indicting. And still less reproachable is the fact that these extraneous attributes do serve the best interests of the establishment, the elected representatives, the general public, and the gas masks themselves for (nearly) all the time and all the circumstances. No, what is damning is that the establishment took too much account of the universal desire for peace, and gave too much credit to the possibility that there may after all be a negative correlation between the expectancy of war and the likelihood that it will occur. Accordingly, the enduring presence of gas masks has been favored over their improbable (and unwanted) performance, and this in turn has led to their crucial if tacit redefinition: from being originally preventive—to save our lives from chemical attacks—they were inadvertently downgraded into being almost palliative—to be there, just in case.
This error was aggravated by the second fault of the establishment, that of complacency. Lured into confidence by the fact that gas masks—because they are objects—can be had (almost) any way it wants them, the establishment failed to comprehend that gas masks—again, because they are objects—can be had only one way at a time. Having the gas masks such as they are (thereby faithfully promoting the apparent common good) is one thing. Requiring of them to recover du jour au lendemain their ostensible raison d’être and effectively realize it is a different story altogether. Remember the ill-fated requirement, set in peacetime, to replace the lids and plugs after use? Consider then, a fortnight or so into the Gulf War, its harrowing counterpart: the new immigrants who bravely kept arriving in Israel were gathered at the airport to have their gas masks distributed, assembled, and explained, and to have the plug of each individually removed, collected, and thrown away, so that they would never ever succumb to the dangerous temptation of obeying the bona fide official instructions! [End Page 293]
Upon this poignant admission, I believe we can reach a just verdict. Acting in good faith for the general good, the establishment blinded itself to the critical difference that distinguishes (in deeds if not in words) “the apparent good” from “the Good itself.” It designated the gas mask for war but nonetheless designed it for peace—a time when the plug’s existence is essential to promote everyone’s best interests, and when all are oblivious to the problems it might cause. Those unfortunate users/victims who failed to remove the plug died of its inopportune presence, of course, and of their own disobedience in not taking it off, and of the designers’ incompetence when putting it on. But above all, they fell victim to the contradiction that emerged between the object’s continuous potential readiness to be used, and its punctual and actual usability. The ensuing conflict was no doubt initiated by the Gulf War, but it is undeniably the well-meaning establishment that made it possible. This conflict did not last (as did the Gulf War itself) from the first Baghdad-bound “smart bomb” to the last shot of the ground war—rather, it began with the establishment’s initial unconscious demand that the plug be always replaced, and it ended with the subsequent self-conscious plea that it be removed forever.
Objective Verdict
While there may be much in this (somewhat impassioned) interpretation to explain many of the difficulties that we and the gas masks have repeatedly encountered, it would be premature and indeed contrary to my original intentions to terminate the trial on this accusing note. Having, as it were, de-plugged the Pandora box, it still remains to reach a verdict that will be objective as well as just. To do so, I propose in these concluding pages to call upon the philosopher Gilbert Simondon and the sociologist Jean Baudrillard to consider the gas mask in terms of its modes of existence.
Aiming to counterbalance the xenophobia displayed by “a facile humanism” toward “techniques” (seen as alien, alienating, and opposed to culture), Simondon urged in Du mode d’existence des objets techniques 6 a prise de conscience of the sens of technical objects, which are in reality constructive mediators between humanity and nature and therefore part and parcel of “human reality.” He proposed in this vein that technical objects are best defined and comprehended through their genesis, which he conceived as an internal and incremental process toward further coherence and self-adaptation. To grasp this process, he established a seminal distinction [End Page 294] between two possible states or modes of existence of the technical object: abstract and concrete.
The abstract car engine (to resort to Simondon’s preferred example of a technical object) is a logical assemblage of isolated and self-sustained elements, each exclusively oriented toward the sole achievement of its defining functions. Being analytic, this type of technical object seeks a precarious compromise of compatibility between its preset principles/elements: for an abstract internal combustion engine to achieve thermal stability (for example), cooling fins are simply added on to the preexisting cylindrical shape of the motor block. The concrete car engine, on the other hand, has its various principles/elements so planned and placed as to take on interdependent and reciprocal functions. Being synthetic, it faces the challenge of securing the convergence and integration of its components. While achieving thermal stability, the cooling fins of the concrete engine are integrated into the motor block in such a way as to take on, from the outset, a structural and mechanical role as well.
Some of Simondon’s ideas were readily co-opted by Baudrillard for his own ends in Le système des objets. 7 Drawing upon semiotics, psychoanalytic theory, and fashion magazines, he argued that objects embody “modes of consumption,” which impregnate modernité into the fabric of daily life. The “functionality” of objects is therefore not related to their adaptedness to a goal as much as to their capacity to integrate themselves into a coherent système de signes. To promote these ideas, Baudrillard used Simondon as a benchmark from which to establish a fundamental separation between technological and psycho-sociological “realities.” Concentrating on the latter aspects, he neutralized the technological reality of the object by portraying it firstly as rigourous, rational, and coherent, then as open to perturbations and modifications by the irrationality of needs, and lastly as unable to account for the système quotidien in which the object takes part.
Somatic and Strategic
Whereas the gas mask may not be a typical technical object, and still less a usual item of bourgeois convoitise, these ideas and notions seem to me extremely pertinent and applicable to the gas mask in their descriptive capacities. At the same time, this very adequacy goes a long way to undermine, rather than confirm, their original explanatory purposes. [End Page 295]
To start with, I argue—and this really should not come as a surprise—that the gas mask is, and has always been conceived to be, abstract in its mode of existence (compare Figure 1 with 2, 3, etc.). Being such as it is, the gas mask is made up of physically separate and preset principles/elements—viz., a rubber mask and a filter—each oriented toward the fulfillment of its own function. It is because of this analytical independence that the improbable and unanticipated assembly of those components can pose severe problems of compatibility and can eventually lead to lethal contradictions. Conversely, it is precisely because of the segregated and compartmentalized state in which these principles/elements are normally held that the potential hazards their assembly might cause remain unperceptible.
But for the same reasons that we can endorse Simondon’s characterization of the object, we cannot accept his interpretation. Gas masks are such as they are—that is abstract—(also) because it has been beneficial to fill their superfluous/advantageous margin with the extraneous and interested attributes of conservation and control (so as to enhance their continuous capacity to be there, just in case). If we decline to explain away the resemblance between wars-distant models as an aberrant case of technological stagnation (or a precocious case of technological perfection), we are forced to accept that the given mode of existence of the gas mask is not (only) a somatic mark of its internal development—as Simondon would have it—but (also) a strategic means with which to incorporate into the object the interests it is designed to serve.
With this reinterpretation, we are also in a better position to account for the “synchronic instability” of the gas mask. Granted that its mode of existence has been enlisted and maintained to promote long-lasting and compelling interests, we can reasonably assume that changes in these interests (as much as Simondon’s inexorable process of concretization) could lead the object to subsequent modes of its existence. Thus—now more than ever—it becomes crucial to recognize and evaluate the various interests conveyed by the object. If it is felt by those concerned that there is nothing particularly immediate or urgent about the new interests that it is now wanted to serve, then the mode of existence of the object can remain immutable through its earthly existence, pending its timely demise and replacement on a generational basis (as Simondon envisioned). If, on the other hand, these new and sudden interests are seen by all concerned as being absolutely vital to secure now, then every possible effort will be made to overcome those aspects that turn out to be obsolete and obstructive by superimposing on the [End Page 296] object a mode of existence that will be transmutable on a situational basis.
To Conclude—Back to the Box
This is exactly what happened with our gas masks, when Israel came under threats of chemical annihilation and went on the defensive. Before that time, the gas masks were conserved and controlled in the establishment’s powerful hands to promote the “common good,” and analytically maintained to perpetuate their potential readiness to be used, just in case, by being abstract. But when, after August 1990, the menace of gas became too credible to be ignored any longer, there occurred of necessity a crucial change of perspective: To recover their ostensible raison d’être and to provide cover for the apprehensive facial expression that “all residents of Israel” now displayed, the gas masks were then forcibly willed to be the “Good itself,” and synthetically assembled to actually and punctually save lives, now, by being concrete.
That the mode of existence of the gas mask does indeed reflect and affect the situations in which it is put and the interests it is meant to serve receives ample confirmation if we recall that—according to the vicissitudes of the armed conflict and the cloud formations hovering over western Iraq—this mode of existence was reversed not once, but many times over. To illustrate this point, and thereby to draw together the strands of all we have investigated and discussed in the trials of the gas mask, let me recall a self-effacing and prosaic object to which we can now give the full credit it deserves—the cardboard box!
When peace reigned, the cardboard box served the gas mask as its hopefully permanent storing sanctuary. When the drôle de guerre started in August 1990, the box (and the sticker) served the gas mask as a vehicle to contain its integrity in the privacy of our homesteads. When those salvos of Scud missiles heralded the January 18, 1991, night of the vernissage, the cardboard box served the gas mask as a crust out of which to mutate onto our near-hysterical faces.
Trajectories of transmutations— the cardboard box as transformer of modes of existence and translator of interests.
It was when the all-clear finally sounded to relieve us from this traumatic interface that the cardboard box saw its hours of glory. When, obeying the official instructions, we dismantled the gas mask back into its box, we promoted its potential existence by having it as it was designed to be—conservable, controllable, and abstract. When, called by the newly sounding alert sirens, we assembled the gas mask out of its box, we promoted our actual existence by having it as it was designated to be—usable, efficient, and concrete. [End Page 297] What the humble cardboard box did, in other words, was to serve as a transformer to different modes of existence, and at the same time as a translator to different interests. Between being a restoring sanatorium backward to “abstraction” and a springboard forward to “concretization,” between being durable and transient, [End Page 298] the cardboard box maintained the object in a fleeting state of underdetermination—a crucial temporal and material instant during which we were able to transform our aspirations (be they about the object, or our lives) into deeds. With the gas mask thus suspended by the cardboard box in a sort of technical Degré Zero, it will be actions toward it (in or out of the box), and not its function, that will determine its fate, and ours too! (See Figure 6.)
Following this trajectory of transmutation permits us also to rescue “techniques” from the unenviable quandary in which they have been posited to be by Jean (“La Guerre du Golfe n’a pas eu lieu”) Baudrillard. Far from being literally meaningless—because technical—the trials that we and the gas masks had to endure show that in the supposedly constraining realm of life-saving techniques, as in most other, “il n’y a pas de geste pur” (dixit M. Mauss), and that rigor and rationality remain relative to the scales and the interests in which they are situated. Concomitantly, far from constituting a preliminary, bracketable, and perturbable “datum,” it is the very technicity of the gas mask that promotes its functional integration into the coherent defensive système of the Israeli home-front. Furthermore, this technicity is necessarily present and implicated in and perpetually impinging on the ongoing quotidienneté of the object—so much so that several unfortunate users/victims died as a consequence!
Following this trajectory of transmutation, we can also understand how it is that the vast majority of the targeted population did manage to “go on the defensive” and survive the process. Those previously known as “Israelis” became “all residents of Israel,” and the “parents’ bedroom” became a “sealed room” sanctuary where the gas mask, with plastic sheets and soggy tea towels as its props, became our pièce de résistance. Transforming us from voting and tax-paying “general public” to frustrated owners to fumbling first-time users and then to habitués, the gas mask itself underwent a salutary transformation: from macabre mental image into an object—abstract, concrete, and good to live and to think with (now that peace reigns again).
[ADDENDUM: This account was not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive, and I have therefore not undertaken any comparative assessments of the various gas masks available on the (surplus) market. The latest gas mask issued by NATO to its three million soldiers is a model of the kind, however, and deserves special mention: its filter does not have a plug at all, and (while being replaceable) it is permanently attached to the rubber mask—an attachment [End Page 299] allowed by the special design of the pouch in which the gas mask is to be stored. If we add the fact that the kit comes with a “detection paper” that changes color in the presence of various gases, we clearly face here an object that is from the outset “concrete.” I leave you to draw the implications.]
Nathan Schlanger is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge and a prehistorian and technologist. His research interests include the relationship between techniques, knowledge, and society, the evolution of human cognitive abilities, and lithic technology. Among his publications are, “Le fait technique total: la raison pratique et les raison de la pratique dans l’oeuvre de Marcel Mauss” (Terrain, 1991); “The Making of a Soufflé: Practical Knowledge and Social Sense” (Techniques & Culture, 1990), “Mindful Technology: Unleashing the Chaîne opératoire for an Archaeology of Mind” (in The Ancient Mind, ed. Renfrew and Zubrow, 1994); and, “L’Intelligence biologique des connaissances et des techniques” (in L’Intelligence des techniques, ed. Latour, in press).
Acknowledgment
An abridged version of this article appeared in the journal Diogène 162 (1993) in French and English.
Footnotes
1. Donald A. Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 46.
2. Ibid., pp. 54–56.
3. Ibid., p. 188–217.
4. Aristotle, Physics 2.3.
5. Gas Mask Usage Instructions for Civilians—size large (no. 1) (Israel: Sal’on Chemical Industries, 1980); emphasis added.
6. Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques (Paris: Aubier, 1958).
7. Jean Baudrillard, Le système des objets (Paris: Gallimard, 1968).
