Pierre Clastres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Clastres

Pierre Clastres
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pierre Clastres (17 May 1934 29 July 1977) was a French anthropologist and ethnographer. He is best known for his fieldwork among the Guayaki, now better known as Ach, in Paraguay and his theory on stateless societies. Clastres took part in the events of May '68. He died, aged 43, in a car accident at Gabriac, Lozre.

Pierre Clastres
Born 11 May 1934 Paris, France Died School 29 July 1977 (aged 43) Gabriac, Lozre (in a car accident) Political Anthropology

Contents
1 Overview of theory 2 Influence in Anarcho-Nihilism 3 Bibliography 3.1 Further reading 4 See also 5 External links

Main interests Society State Power War Notable ideas Society against the State Powerless chief Logic of prestige Centripetal and centrifugal force Influenced by Influenced

Overview of theory
In his most famous work, Society Against the State (1974), Clastres criticizes both the evolutionist notion that the state would be the ultimate destiny of all societies, and the Rousseauian notion of man's natural state of innocence (the myth of the noble savage). Knowledge of power is innate in any society, thus the natural state for humans wanting to preserve autonomy is a society structured by a complex set of customs which actively avert, ward off and refuse the rise of despotic power. The state is seen as but a specific constellation of hierarchical power peculiar only to societies who have failed to maintain these mechanisms which prevent separation from happening. Thus, in the Guayaki tribes, the chief has only a representational role, being his people's spokesperson towards other tribes ("international relations"). Internally, the chief only holds a supposed, apparent form of power and, in fact, is constantly rendered powerless by the tribe. If he abuses his role as chief, he may be violently removed by his people, and the institution of "spokesperson" is never allowed to transform itself into a separate institution of authority. Pierre Clastres' theory thus was an explicit criticism of Marxist theories of economic determinism, in that he considered an autonomous sphere of politics, which existed in stateless societies as the active conjuration of authority. The essential question which Clastres sought to answer was: why would an egalitarian (e.g. foraging) society chose to subordinate itself to an external authority? He considered the appearance of the state to be due to the power disparities that arise when religion credits a prophet or other medium with a direct knowledge of divine power which is unattainable by the bulk of society. It is this upsetting of the balance of power that engendered the inequality to be found in more highly structured societies, and not an initial economic disparity as argued by the Marxist school of thought.

Influence in Anarcho-Nihilism
Following Clastres' theory of early societies having natural systems to prevent the centralization of power an anarcho-nihilist view of society emerges. Anarcho-Nihilism holds the belief that through Clastres' observations societies have both natural and rational ways to regulate power that do not conflict with either mutual self-interest or normal self-interest. As such Anarcho-Nihilism utilizes this theory in furthering views on Will to Power and the belief that societies originally regulated power disparities to prevent the rise of

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Pierre Clastres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Clastres

hierarchy, and should rationally return to this form of society. As opposed to authority rising from self-interest counter to Marxism anarcho-nihilism, like Clastres, argues that the freedom and self-interest of individuals instead prevents the rise of hierarchy and authority if individuals remain rational and guided by their own self-interest.

Bibliography
Libert, malencontre, innommable dans tienne de La Botie, Le Discours de la servitude volontaire Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians (Chronique des indiens Guayaki), 1972 Society Against the State (La Socit contre l'tat), 1974 Le Grand Parler. Mythes et chants sacrs des Indiens Guaran, 1974 French Marxists and their Anthropology (Les marxistes et leur anthropologie), 1978 Recherches d'anthropologie politique, 1980 Archeology of Violence (Archologie de la violence. La guerre dans les socits primitives.)

Further reading
Bartholomew Dean: "Critical Re-vision: Clastres' Chronicle and the optic of primitivism", 2002 In Best of Anthropology Today, 1974-2000, ed. J. Benthall, with a preface by M. Sahlins. London: Routledge. [1] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0415262550) Geertz, Clifford: "Deep Hanging Out", The New York Review of Books, Vol. XLV (1998), no. 16 (Oct 22), pp. 69 72 Gilles Deleuze & Flix Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus, esp. "Treatise on Nomadology The War Machine", proposition II. Tiqqun, "Sorrows of the Civilised Warrior", from This is not a program

See also
Political anthropology Endemic warfare

External links
An Excerpt from Society Against the State (http://www.primitivism.com/society-state.htm) (English) A page from the Librairie Libertaire, describing Clastres and linking to some of his essays (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/libertaire/archive/2000/228-mai/clastres.htm) (French) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre_Clastres&oldid=555327404" Categories: 1934 births 1977 deaths French anthropologists French anarchists Latin Americanists Anarchist academics This page was last modified on 16 May 2013 at 06:20. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

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