Homing Toxicity: The Domestication of Herbicidal Warfare

Abstract

In recent years, Agent Orange has re-entered scholarly discourse as a fertile site for investigating the confluence of slow violence, intergenerational trauma, and the molecularization of chemical regimes. This study analyzes how the political economy that gave way to the discovery and tactical use of Agent Orange “abroad” during times of “war,” finds several new homes on US soil. First, I discuss how Agent Orange was tested domestically at Eglin Air Force Base in the western Florida Panhandle, prior to and during its use in Vietnam, to trace how civilian workers who worked on base were made into surplus labor through banal daily exposure to the chemical compounds. Second, I analyze how Vietnamese refugees were transported to Eglin Air Force Base in 1975 as it became one of four relocation centers used as temporary “homes” for refugees awaiting sponsorship by US American families. Finally, I trace how herbicides are being reintroduced in the Mekong Delta within rural farming communities to help maintain the demand of global agricultural circuits. By tracing these three interwoven examples of how military herbicides were domesticated, this essay weaves analyses of the spectacular violence of chemical warfare, with their more mundane iterations, to home in on the forms of toxicity that linger and are reproduced at home.