Introduction: Everyday authoritarianism, teachers and the tenuous hyphen in nation-state -- Struggling for the nation: Contradictions of revolutionary nationalism -- "It seemed like a punishment": Coercive state effects and the maddening state -- Students or soldiers?: Troubled state technologies and the imagined future of educated Eritrea -- Reeducating Eritrea: Disorder, disruption and remaking the nation -- Teacher state: Morality and everyday sovereignty over schools -- Conclusion: Escape, encampment and alchemical nationalism.