This analysis examines the metaphor of the black soldier's body as a national polity in Gwendolyn Brooks' "Negro Hero." Through embedded war narratives, Brooks uses the prototype of the black soldier Doris Miller to explore how black soldiers transgress the racist barriers of the American political body with their natural bodies. Drawing on Ernst Kantorowicz's dual-structure analytical framework, the article compares the American state to a political body and the black soldier's body to a natural body, revealing the core expression of Brooks' integrationist poetics and offering a new perspective for reflecting on the discursive logic of the American Civil Rights Movement.

The Natural Body of the Black Soldier as a Rebuttal to the Political Body of Official Liberal Discourse

This section explores how black soldiers in "Negro Hero" use their natural bodies to rebut the political body of official liberal discourse. Kantorowicz's *The King's Two Bodies* is cited to illustrate the early monarchy's dualistic corporeal fiction and how England completed its modern constitutional transformation by imitating the Christian mystical body. Kantorowicz's methodology provides a new perspective for analyzing the formation of the American national polity. The *Declaration of Independence* transfers the natural rights of the people to the state through the political fiction of contractual delegation, but in practice, the public personhood of the people is embodied as white and male, excluding marginalized groups from the rights-bearing subject. President Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" during World War II provided moral justification for American involvement in the war while suppressing domestic civil rights struggles. The black newspaper *Pittsburgh Courier* coined the "Double V" slogan, calling on black Americans to fight for democracy both internationally and domestically. Brooks' poem, through the fictionalized experiences of the black soldier Miller, depicts the racial discrimination black soldiers faced during World War II and their resistance to the racism of the national political body.

The Blood-Stained Body of the Black Soldier as a Subversion of the Noble Body of America's Racist Military

This section discusses the dual physical and political challenges black soldiers faced in America's racist military. Despite America's professed egalitarianism, Social Darwinism provided "scientific" legitimacy for racial hierarchies. Black people were deemed biologically inferior, leading to their restriction and segregation in the military. The U.S. military, as a symbol of white privilege, maintained its noble body by excluding black soldiers. However, civil rights leaders leveraged the war to pressure the government for racial equality in the military. In *Negro Hero*, the black soldier Miller, through his soliloquy, challenges white discourse on black soldiers' evolutionary inferiority and blood taboos, exposing the absence and self-erasure of black soldiers in war narratives. Miller's soliloquy reflects both the internalization of white racist scrutiny and black soldiers' questioning of their own identity. The poem subverts the hierarchical relationship between the white military and black soldiers through Miller's act of reversing roles, highlighting the crucial role of black soldiers in the civil rights struggle.

The Loyal Body of the Black Soldier as a Transgression of the Sacred Body of White Supremacist Democracy

This section explores how America shaped national identity and patriotic sentiment by personifying and feminizing the state, as well as the complex symbolic implications for black soldiers. Hobbes' theory of the state posits that the state is an artificial construct, and America, as a product of contractual founding, derives its political fiction from England's commercial imperial expansion. In constructing its nation-state, America fostered patriotic devotion by likening the state to female figures, from the "Indian Queen" to the "Indian Princess" and later "Columbia," reflecting the exclusion of racial others and white supremacism in national iconography.

During the Civil War, "Columbia" became a "dominant fiction" for war mobilization and patriotic fervor, with the North and South emphasizing her maternal and ladylike qualities, respectively, projecting female purity onto national integrity. In World Wars I and II, female personifications of the state continued to evoke soldiers' patriotism, extending to universal values like freedom and equality. Yet, for black soldiers, the white female personification of the state carried deeper symbolic complexities. America's racial hierarchy, justified by evolutionary theories, rendered white women taboo objects of black male desire. When the state was personified as a white woman, her purity equated to national purity, making black soldiers' desire for inclusion akin to political rape.

In African American literature, the white female figure becomes an archetype evoking both allure and destruction. Brooks' *Negro Hero* introduces the white woman as the embodiment of the state, with Miller's devotion to the "Goddess of Democracy" laid bare. His combat actions, initially timid under white scorn, culminate in his defiance of racist orders during Pearl Harbor, where he steps forward from his role as a mess attendant. Miller's biologically racialized body faced severe exclusion in military service, but his actions at Pearl Harbor transgressed racial hierarchies, making him a symbolic figure in the struggle for cultural capital.

Miller's body, like that of the white woman, becomes part of America's democratic symbolism, carrying cultural capital. Yet, his heroism did not alter his segregated non-combat role. He perished when the USS Liscome Bay was torpedoed. The poem's final stanza voices Miller's response to the shared question among black soldiers—why fight? Was their sacrifice worth it? Will America ever achieve true democracy? Miller dies without regret, believing he did well. Thousands like him shed blood for this land's freedom, forging an "irreversible blood bond" between the loyal body of black soldiers and the political body of the state.

During the Civil Rights Movement, America expanded its conception of rights-bearing subjects, shifting from exclusion to inclusion. Framing racial issues within liberal and moralistic tenets of the American creed, seeking to integrate them into democratic discourse, was central to Brooks' integrationist poetics and the movement's logic. The movement's new national discourse partly led to the late 20th-century trend where political issues were supplanted by cultural identity debates, which in turn became hyper-politicized.