Revisiting the Falklands-Malvinas Question

The conflict over possession of the Falklands-Malvinas Islands was waged in an area remote both geographically and geo-politically in an era of cold war and also of tensions within and between sovereign states of the supposed western bloc. It has been broadly perceived as an absurd confrontation, the echoes of which, despite the brevity of its duration, and some four decades on, resonate still not least in the lasting wounds that bear testimony yet to its underlying causes. 

This book probes the reasons behind the conflict’s tragic occurrence and the processing of its consequences in and beyond the sovereign states that suffered and suffer still from the exacerbating of nationalist identities in the resolution of their differences and the consequent challenges to be addressed. Drawing on perspectives that bring together contributors from markedly differing backgrounds, whether national or disciplinary, this collection reinforces the spirit of critical questioning that historical and sociological research must ever value and pursue. Prejudices and preconceptions are acknowledged and confronted yet contextualised and revised through filters of new questions and answers which are not always anticipated or, for the stubbornly partisan, readily embraced.

Preface
Guillermo Mira and Fernando Pedrosa

Introduction: State, national identity and power: a historical tour in search of the causes of the Falklands–Malvinas War
Guillermo Mira and Fernando Pedrosa

1. Resisting bio-power: ‘laughter’, ‘fraternity’ and ‘imagination’ under dictatorship and the Malvinas–Falklands War
María José Bruña Bragado

2. Exile, the Malvinas War and human rights
Silvina Jensen

3. Attitudes towards the Falklands–Malvinas War: European and Latin American left perspectives
Fernando Pedrosa

4. The Falklands–Malvinas War and transitions to democracy in Latin America: the turning point of 1979–82 
Guillermo Mira

5. The Malvinas journey: harsh landscapes, rough writing, raw footage
Julieta Vitullo

6. Malvinas miscellanea: notes on a diary written while shooting a film in these remote islands
Edgardo Dieleke

7. Malvinas, civil society and populism: a cinematic perspective
Joanna Page

8. Flying the flag: Malvinas and questions of patriotism
Catriona McAllister

9. Leaving behind the trenches of nationalism: teaching the Malvinas in secondary schools in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz province
Matthew C. Benwell and Alejandro Gasel

10. Chronicle of a referendum foretold: what next for the Malvinas–Falklands?
Cara Levey and Daniel Ozarow

11. The limits of negotiation
Andrew Graham-Yooll

12. It breaks two to tangle: constructing and deconstructing bridges
Bernard McGuirk