ABSTRACT
Although reimagining the state seems a futile endeavour in the contemporary historical conjuncture, the dangers that we face today also make the task of reimagining the state an imperative one. This means that state policy then becomes a legitimate arena for contestation. In this chapter, the aim is to examine the state from a feminist and postcolonial perspective and to raise questions about the state in a globalised world: (1) The relationship between the state and the gendered household: how does the state continue to reproduce and re-form the household and social reproduction through law and social policy to respond to capitalism’s needs and crises? (2) Does the political form of the state matter? And if it does, then (3) how should one engage with and challenge the state in its fractions to bring about change making through our own political solidarity? The chapter examines the state debates from a critical feminist and postcolonial perspective to ask: Whose imagination matters in the discourses of reshaping the state? It further argues that an intersectional analysis is important to complexify class analysis, without which the building of solidarity in challenge to the state would remain fractured and weak.
