If how the state is imagined shapes social and political action, the politics of state imagining provides an important site for progressive reflection. Arguing that conceptual approaches which support critique may not necessarily prove the best frameworks for supporting change, this article takes a left poststructuralist conception as its starting point to explore the place of conflicting interests, beliefs and affect in the make-up of the state and in shaping its enactment within civil society. Seeking to re-imagine state form in (...) a way that enhances the state's relevance for progressive politics, the paper moves between (i) conservative Christian refusal to provide gay people with a service, as public sector staff and guesthouse owners; and (ii) feminist work in embodiment studies and on the intimate/impersonal, with its ways of thinking about, and imagining, a state that is oriented to encounters, dissonance, tension and change. (shrink)