During the course of the First World War, soldiers’ bodies were fed into the jaws of battle under the assumption that the “life” of the nation was more significant than the lives of human beings. Individual bodies were sacrificed in the name of the greater glory of the body politic. The First World War enacted the ideological proposition “The individual must die so that the nation might live.”

In war, the body and blood of the sacrificed soldier give rise to the reality of the nation. Killing and dying substantiate the idea that nations exist. The sound and fury of battle function to convince everyone that something profound and real is occurring.

Warfare testifies to the existence of nations. Battle—the bodies of dead and wounded soldiers—anchors belief in material reality—persuading us that countries are more than social constructions. Surely, we reflect, human beings would not—could not—kill and die in the name of no thing.

Thanks very much,

Mary Helen Guider Shaw