Ernst Kantorowicz  analyzed the idea of the “second body of the King.” The King has “two bodies,” his actual body and a second body, the latter of which is more ample and that “lives on” though the King has died. A gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D. C. is like the “second body of a king:” commoners transformed into immortals. The idea is that those who “die for their country”-- sacrifice themselves in war--will remain eternally a part of the geography of the nation for which they have died, forever fused (in a physical way) with their nation.

The dead soldier, or the gravestone or monuments that represents the dead soldier constitutes the cultural memory of a war. The soldier lives on, therefore the nation lives on. The immortality of a nation is contained within its war memorials. Wars are fought to create these gravestones and thus to prove the existence of a nation. The body politic grows out of the bodies of individuals--dead soldiers whose gravestones constitute “building blocks,” national monuments, the foundation for the continuing existence of one’s nation.

Maintaining the idea of a nation requires sacrifice. This symbolic entity-- one’s nation--comes into being to the extent that sacrifices are performed in its name. Thus, nations require wars. When there are wars—when people are dying for a national cause—it’s very difficult to “imagine there’s no country.” When the “rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air,” it is difficult to say that a nation doesn’t exist. The hysterical energy and excitement constitute “proof” that the flag is still there; that the nation is continuing to exist.

If there is no such thing as a country, people reflect, how come so many people are dying? Why are the rockets and bombs making so much noise, lighting up the sky? Why are men dying? All of the sound and fury must signify something. People must by dying, the sound and fury must be occurring, in the name of something real. That “something” for which people are dying is “the country.” Sacrifice (the expenditure of human beings and material objects) brings into being the object for which sacrifices are made.

The logic of warfare is: If the rockets are glaring, if bombs are bursting, if people are dying, then something very real is occurring. Wars are fought to persuade us that nations are real. The fantasy of the nation becomes an actuality to the extent that killing and dying occur in war. Killing and dying in war brings the idea of the nation into existence. Witnessing dead and maimed soldiers, we imagine that they must have died for some thing. It is difficult to imagine that they died for “no thing.”

Dead and maimed bodies on the field of battle create the “body politic,” affirm the reality of a nation. The logic of sacrifice is: that for which people die is real. The body politic consumes the bodies of individuals and thereby comes alive. To the extent that the nation feeds off the bodies of people killed or maimed in war, to that extent it exists.

Gravestones and memorials are records of  sacrifice, symbols of dead soldiers. Arlington National Cemetery is the embodied version of a “imagined community,” assuring us that the “United States of America” is solid and real. How could anyone possibility believe that the nation is not a real thing: Look at all the people who have died in its name.

Sacrificial death gives rise to the idea of the nation. Dead or maimed bodies validate the idea, transform the fantasy of an omnipotent body into something that seems real. Surely—those who maintain the fantasy of the nation insist—all of the wars must have occurred in the name of something real. Surely all of those deaths must refer to something. The sound and fury of war, the dead human beings that war produces, testify to the reality of nations.

Dead bodies are the “ore of confirmation” (Elaine Scarry). We do not allow ourselves to imagine, to say, that people have died for nothing, in the name of an illusion. Surely we do not wish to say that the sound and fury occurred for naught.