This is a book about how citizens construct the idea of their state by imagining the wider world. It does this by focusing on the case of Zimbabwe. Drawing on interviews with more than 200 Zimbabweans, collected over three years, it develops a theoretical framework rooted in Hegelian and psychoanalytic struggles for recognition, projection and introjection in IR. This approach enables the author to contribute both to understandings of African politics, and to broader themes about difference and subjectivity in IR.