The state’s power works most effectively when its political nature becomes invisible and everyday

Evidence

While this kind of archaeology, maturing in the age of mechanical reproduction, was profoundly political, it was political at such a deep level that almost everyone, including the personnel of the colonial state (who, by the 1930s, were in most of Southeast Asia 90 per cent native) was unconscious of the fact. It had all become normal and everyday. It was precisely the infinite quotidian reproducibility of its regalia that revealed the real power of the state. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 675

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the mechanism of hegemony in Anderson’s register: power operating at such depth that even its own agents are unconscious of it — a bridge to Gramsci’s common sense.
• XREF: Directly scaffolds the Islamophobia field’s reliance on Gramscian hegemony and common sense; the unconscious colonial state personnel prefigure how racialized categories operate through everyone. — connects to: Mystified power thrives when citizens are far from its sources; In totalitarian states, real power correlates inversely with institutional visibility; Disciplinary power stays invisible while making its subjects compulsorily visible — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 288 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The quotidian reproducibility of regalia revealing state power is a dense, layered claim — political effect residing in its very ordinariness.

Related

• Mystified power thrives when citizens are far from its sources (similarity 0.82)
• In totalitarian states, real power correlates inversely with institutional visibility (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Disciplinary power stays invisible while making its subjects compulsorily visible #corroborates (0.88) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 288