Reimagining the State: Theoretical Challenges and Transformative Possibilities

This book examines what value, if any, the state has for the pursuit of progressive politics; and how it might need to be reimagined and remade to deliver transformative change. Is it possible to reimagine the state in ways that open up projects of political transformation? This interdisciplinary collection provides alternative perspectives to the ‘antistatism’ of much critical writing and contemporary political movement activism. Contributors explore ways of reimagining the state that attend critically to the capitalist, neoliberal, gendered and racist conditions of contemporary polities, yet seek to hold onto the state in the process. Drawing on postcolonial, poststructuralist, feminist, queer, Marxist and anarchist thinking, they consider how states might be reread and reclaimed for radical politics. At the heart of this book is state plasticity – the capacity of the state conceptually and materially to take different forms. This plasticity is central to transformational thinking and practice, and to the conditions and labour that allow it to take place. But what can reimagining do; and what difficulties does it confront? This book will appeal to academics and research students concerned with critical and transformative approaches to state theory, particularly in governance studies, politics and political theory, socio-legal studies, international relations, geography, gender/sexuality, cultural studies and anthropology.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of contributors Introduction Davina Cooper PART I The politics of reimagination 1 The political work of reimagination Janet Newman 2 Reimagining the state: Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism Shirin M. Rai 3 State as pharmakon Nikita Dhawan PART II Performing re-readings 4 Why Africa’s ‘weak states’ matter: A postcolonial critique of Euro-Western discourse on African statehood and sovereignty Anna Maria Krämer 5 The ethical state? María do Mar Castro Varela 6 Christian Israel Didi Herman 7 Using the master’s tools: Rights and radical politics Ruth Kinna PART III Prefigurative practices 8 Anticipatory representation: Thinking art and museums as platforms of resourceful statecraft Chiara De Cesari 9 Conceptual prefiguration and municipal radicalism: Reimagining what it could mean to be a state Davina Cooper 10 Regulating with social justice in mind: An experiment in reimagining the state Morag McDermont and the Productive Margins Collective PART IV Reimagining otherwise 11 Harmful thoughts: Reimagining the coercive state? John Clarke 12 Border abolition and how to achieve it Nick Gill 13 Refusal first, then reimagination: Presenting the Burn in Flames Post-Patriarchal Archive in Circulation Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones Concluding reflections Janet Newman and Nikita Dhawan