Imagining beyond a statist imaginary

Abstract

The chilling infiltration by technologies of state power that make up modern governance is brought home by each of the articles in AE’s “Citizenship, Solidarity, and Nonbelonging” forum. In reflecting on them, I pose the question: Can we move beyond descriptions of human agency entirely within the cracks and fissures of state governance? Or can we develop a richer futural imagination that goes beyond a statist imaginary? If we are to sustain such an endeavor, we need not only imaginative analytical frameworks, but also forms of language that resist being reduced to “thinking like the state.”