ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contested alignments between political activism and progressive imaginaries of the state. It proceeds through a series of propositions that offer productive resources for reimagination, and different approaches to conceptualising politics, power and agency. Imagining states beyond nations argues for a relational conception of space that enables solidarities across social and spatial divisions. Imaging the multi-ness of states challenges monolithic images, instead depicting states as traversed by multiple political projects that are aligned in temporary and unstable settlements. Imagining a ’feeling’ state explores the contradictory place of emotions in governance, and the contested politics of ‘care’ as progressive imaginary. Imagining states as public things explores processes of assembly, representation and mediation, and suggests the importance of emergent and prefigurative forms. Throughout, the chapter situates reimagination not as a form of abstract idealism, but as embodied political labour.
