ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores a series of propositions that offer productive resources for rethinking states’ relationships to plurality, nationhood, feeling and publicity. It focuses on the relationship between the state and the gendered household given relations of capitalist production and social reproduction, questions of political form, and the vital need for new forms of solidarity underpinned by an intersectional approach to social relations. The book argues that the state’s ability to intervene in and regulate social power-conflicts, including hate-speech disputes, should be recognised even as the state also contributes to such conflicts’ structure, force and genesis. It also focuses on experimental cultural practices in relation to a Palestinian national museum, and Palestinian art biennials, by a Palestinian non-governmental organisation in 2007 and 2009. The book also explores the challenge of practising regulation in ways that engage communities at the margins of state decision-making.
