The supposedly culture-free civic state is deeply embedded in cultural meanings

Evidence

The claim is that the liberal state has sloughed off its ethnic-particularistic skin and emerged in its culturally cleansed, universalistic, civic form. Britain, however, like all civic nationalisms, is not only a sovereign political and territorial entity but also “an imagined community.” It is the latter which is the focus of identification and belongingness. The discourses of the nation do not, as we are led to suppose, reflect an already-achieved unified state. Their purpose is, rather, to forge or construct a unified form of identification out of the many differences of class, gender, region, religion, and locality which actually crosscut the nation (Hall 1992; Bhabha 1990). To achieve this, these discourses must deeply embed and enmesh the so-called culture-free “civic” state in a dense entanglement of cultural meanings, traditions, and values which come to stand for or represent the nation. It is only within culture and representation that identification with this “imagined community” can be constructed at all. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 359

Categorization

• DEFINE: Extends Anderson’s ‘imagined community’ concept as a mechanism: national discourse actively forges unity across internal differences rather than reflecting an achieved state.
• XREF: Directly builds on Benedict Anderson’s imagined community and Bhabha’s nation-as-narration; directly portable to Islamophobia analyses of British national identity constructed against the Muslim other. — connects to: Civic beliefs are equivocal cultural productions, not fixed inner states — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”: The work of avoiding…, 170; Science presents itself as universal and culture-free but is itself a cultural discourse — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 545
• ADDENDUM: The ‘cultural meanings which come to stand for or represent the nation’ connects to the trees-as-infrastructure grafting metaphor of layered representation — how symbolic systems are woven into a fabric.