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Legitimacy of Death: National Appropriation of the Fallen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2019

Gordana Uzelac
Gordana Uzelac*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, London Metropolitan University, London, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. Email: g.uzelac@londonmet.ac.uk
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Abstract

Many influential theorists of nationalism see war as a social conflict that to a great extent homogenizes and unifies the nation. Nowhere is that unity more clearly expressed than in war memorials and cemeteries. This article considers the examples of Britain and the USA during the aftermath of World War I in order to examine how the state legitimized its ownership of the bodies of its dead soldiers. It argues first that in an internal dispute, when all sides share a normative ideology, nationalism cannot offer an effective basis for legitimacy. Second, it shows that during the aftermath of World War I, the bodies of dead soldiers were not symbols. This article concludes that in order to transform a dead body into a symbol, the body first has to be “de-individualized.”

Keywords

nationalismnational ceremoniesnational monumentsWorld War IBritainlegitimacysoldier dead
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 647 - 659
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019 

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