Description
This paper examines how, in context of the Russia-Ukraine war, representations of children become a site of temporalisation of (in)security. While critical literature has already extensively examined the relationship between (imagined) childhood and time, much of it explores (and problematises) instances of children cast as symbols of futurity. By contrast, I examine how in the Russia-Ukraine war, childhood becomes a space through which the Russian state organises the relationship between future as well as past and present. In various official narratives, Russian and Ukrainian children are imagined as future “protectors” or “threats”. However, these future-focused tropes are simultaneously evoked with retrospective genealogies where children are constructed as descendants of World War II “winners” and “losers”. I argue that childhood constitutes a particularly powerful site for temporalising (in)security, as its affective and symbolic appeal enables the collapse of “future” and “past” boundaries to justify violence in the present. The paper thus contributes, first, to ongoing debates on childhood as a technology of governance in international relations. Second, uncovers how metaphors of time can mobilised as instruments of political action, thus contributing to critical discussions of time and temporality.
