A Note from Richard Koenigsberg

I'm in the process now of reviewing my papers (many of which are published online) as I create a new website/platform for myself--moving toward bringing my ideas into the world (beyond conveying them to the especially selected geniuses on this mailing list).

I'll become a "public intellectual:" lecturing, doing podcasts, interviews, etc.

Occasionally, I come across an idea that I'd like to share. The piece below, THE BODY AND BLOOD OF THE SOLDIER GIVES RISE TO THE REALITY OF THE NATION is from a paper, "Aztec Warfare, Western Warfare: The Soldier as Sacrificial Victim," published in The AnthroGlobe Journal.

The relationship between the death of the individual and life of the nation is expressed in concrete, physical terms by a French soldier (in the First World War) who suggests that sacrificial death constitutes the “gift of blood” that represents the “supernatural force of the renewal of life that must be given to our country.”

This metaphor conveys the idea of death in battle as a transfusion—the moment at which blood contained within the body of the soldier passes or flows into the body politic, functioning to energize the latter and keep it alive.

Happy New Year,

Richard Koenigsberg
 

THE BODY AND BLOOD OF THE SOLDIER
GIVES RISE TO THE REALITY OF THE NATION

The First World War arose out of belief in and attachment to nations. War was undertaken, justified and perpetuated in the name of countries. Soldiers’ bodies were fed into the war-machine based on the assumption that the “lives” of nations were more significant than the lives of human beings. The ideology of nationalism has been expressed throughout history in phrases like “The individual must die so that the nation might live.” In the First World War, we witnessed a massive enactmen of this very proposition.

In war, the body and blood of the sacrificed soldier gives rise to the reality of the nation. Killing and dying substantiate the idea that nations exist. The sound and fury of battle convince us that something profound and real is occurring. Battle—the bodies of dead and wounded soldiers—anchors belief in material reality, persuading us that countries are more than social constructions. Surely we think to ourselves, human beings could not, would not, kill and die in the name of nothing.

John Horne analyzed the published letters of French soldiers who fought in the First World War. The current running through these letters was the idea of national sacrifice as a source of redemption and renewal.

Shortly before his death, Robert Dubarle wrote of "the glorious privilege of sacrificing oneself, voluntarily." Looking at the warriors who had fallen around him, French soldier J. Saleilles wondered whether the “gift of their blood” was not the “supernatural source of the renewal of life which must be given to our country.” And if this were so, then it would be unacceptable to “wail and lament like pagans in the face of all these dead.”

F. Belmont, moved by attending a field mass with 500 soldiers, wrote that the war, like all great sacrifices, “at least has a purifying role. It is by sacrifice and suffering that regeneration occurs.” A Catholic priest serving as an ambulance man on the western front expressed a similar vision: “We await the decisive all-out assault. So many sacrifices! May they help bring the resurrection of a greater, more beautiful and truly Christian France.” Indeed, wrote Pierre-Maurice Massoon, a Catholic academic who was killed by a shell in Lorraine in April 1916, one needed an almost “religious faith in one’s country to accept such an immolation without revolt and moral disarray.”

From whence came this conviction that suffering and sacrifice would bring about the regeneration or “resurrection” of France? Why imagine that because soldiers die, the nation will be “delivered?” What does it mean to say that the renewal of the life of one’s nation depends upon the “gift of blood” provided by a soldier? Each of these expressions links the death of the soldier to the survival or more abundant life of one’s nation. What logic leads to the belief that a nation benefits by virtue of the death of so many soldiers?

The relationship between the death of the individual and life of the nation is expressed in concrete, physical terms by the soldier who suggests that it is the “gift of blood” that represents the “supernatural force of the renewal of life that must be given to our country.” This metaphor conveys the idea of death in battle as a transfusion—the moment at which the blood contained within the body of the soldier passes or flows into the body politic, functioning to energize the latter and to keep it alive.