dc.description.abstract | Anniversaries of war often present opportunities for the telling and retelling of tales about the geopolitical; tales of a nation’s sovereignty, its identity, its security, and how these are imagined and reimagined through the notion of specific conflicts, their histories, beginnings, ends and aftermaths. By examining the case of the ongoing ‘war’ over the Falklands-Malvinas, and a particular set of stories where the ‘childish’ has come to characterise relations and differences between Britain and Argentina, this paper explores how the temporality of ‘the anniversary’ can enable certain claims, about the rationality of war, as a means of safeguarding sovereignty, identity and security, to become common sensical. The paper argues that more attention should be paid to geopolitical tales of supposedly ‘adult’ and ‘childish’ characters because these constructions have the potential to normalise violence as a common-sensical act of strong, adult nations; as an integral part of their national stories that obscures the aggressive role of the state in normalising and perpetuating violence. | en_GB |