The heroic-mother cult lets society claim the right to kill soldiers’ sons

Evidence

The mother remains connected to death as in ancient Parcae mythology; it is she who buries the dead, who mourns. But her role is precisely to integrate death with life, with society, with the good. And so the cult of “heroic mothers” is systematically encouraged: if society persuades mothers to surrender their sons to death, then it thinks it can claim the right to assassinate them. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 369

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects directly to ‘On Sacrifice’ — the mother as the ritual agent who integrates state-sponsored death (war) into life and the good, parallel to sacrificial figures who legitimize stratified violence.
• SEED: Angle: how every war machine manufactures the mother’s consent first — the maternal blessing as the true conscription ritual.
• XREF: connects to: Right to kill depends on readiness to expose own soldiers; War exercises sovereignty through the right to kill. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 7; The cult of life for its own sake is repressive, ruthless and deadly — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 88

Broader Connections

• Right to kill depends on readiness to expose own soldiers #corroborates (0.95)
• War exercises sovereignty through the right to kill. #complicates (0.85) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 7
• The cult of life for its own sake is repressive, ruthless and deadly #complicates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 88