286 RüdigerKunow
Even while the administrative history of embodied non-normativity
cannot be reported here, I want to begin my analysis by pointing to an
example which sometimes escapes the attention of cultural critics: the
military. The entanglement of disability in governmentality is probably
nowhere more intense, materially and symbolically, than in the case of
soldiers with a disability acquired "in action," in the service of and for
their country. The government, the state itself, depends on the soldier's
body as an instrument of the wars fought in the national interest
(however defined); at the same time, a veteran coming back from the
war with debilitating injuries depends on the state for support. In
recognitionofthistrajectory,manysocialformations,notonlyinrecent
times but from very early on in history, have bestowed symbolic, much
lessoftenmaterial,privilegesupondisabledformersoldiers.
Disability throws into stark relief the synecdochic relation between
the soldier's body and the body politic, personal (dis)abilities and the
(dis)ability of the state. This relationship is intimately personal as well
asintensely public,anditisalwaysmediatedthroughthepublic culture
(Glantz 3-15, 28-46). Soldiers' abilities define or delimit the abilities of
the state as an actor in international politics. Inversely, the inability of
the state to take proper care of those who gave what Abraham Lincoln
called "the full measure of their devotion" to the common cause signals
an overall failure of the body politic.^118 This is the reason why the
militaryintheU.S.developedtheirowndisabilitycharity,theDisability
CompensationadministratedbytheVeteransAdministration(VA).
The professionalization of soldiering that went on in all Western
societies beginning in the 15thcentury has done much to invest the
soldier with a heroic, larger-than-life status, a status which includes the
ideological presumption of well-nigh invulnerability. While the soldier-
hero figure has since then lost some of its luster in many Western
European cultures, it persists in the United States, where it is the
backboneoftheall-volunteerarmedforces.The"conventionalimageof
(^118) BuildingonexamplesfromtherecentwarinIraqandcombiningthemwitha
historicaloverview,JohnM.Kinderhasrecentlypresentedanin-depthstudyof
the contradictions of being a disabled veteran in the U.S. What he calls in the
subtitle of his book "the problem of the disabled veteran" is much more than a
medical rehabilitation issue; it is in essence a social and cultural problem (300-
09).