Corps/corpse: The U.S. military and homosexuality

Abstract

I examine testimony of over thirty military witnesses during four days of 1993 congressional hearings addressing the controversy over gays and lesbians serving openly in the United States military. Witnesses dispute two major topics: the “nature” of the military, and the “nature” of homosexuals. These topics parallel dual meanings of “corps” that structure this controversy—corps as a social body and corps as the flesh of physical bodies. More broadly, I argue that the rhetorical strategies of incorporation and disin‐corporation function as indices of power, for these strategies are unequally available to the disputants and engender disparate rhetorical effects.