Pierre Clastres

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Pierre Clastres (born May 17, 1934 in Paris , † July 29, 1977 in Gabriac , Lozère ), was a French ethnologist . He is best known for his work on political anthropology , his anarchist commitment and for his monograph on the Guayaki in Paraguay .

Life

Initially trained as a philosopher , Clastres became interested in Americanist anthropology under the influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Alfred Métraux . The Discours de la servitude volontaire by Étienne de La Boétie became a central point of reference in his work early on .

Pierre Clastres was always doing field research in South America. He spent 1963 with the Guayaki in Paraguay. In 1965 he was with the Guarani , again in Paraguay. He conducted research with the Chulupi twice , first in 1966, then in 1968. In 1970 he spent a short time with the Yanomami , together with his colleague Jacques Lizot . After all, he was with the Guarani in Brazil for a short time in 1974 .

In 1974 he became a researcher at the CNRS and published the collection of articles La société contre l'État . In 1975 he became research director (directeur d'études) at the 5th section of the École pratique des hautes études . In 1977 he died in a traffic accident and left an unfinished work.

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La société contre l'État - Society against the state

In his best-known work La société contre l'État , Clastres criticizes the evolutionist theories, according to which the state is the finality of every society, and the Rousseauist theories, which assume a natural human innocence. In doing this, he paradoxically expels the state from the central position it had until then in political anthropology in order to re-center the problem of its emergence around the concept of political violence. Every society knows the problem of the concentration of political violence, which explains the natural tendency of people to maintain their autonomy in relation to other people. The societies are understood as structures that actively prevent the expansion of authoritarian and despotic power by means of a network of complex norms.

In contrast, the state is a legislative constellation based on a hierarchical power that legitimizes it. This is especially true in societies that have not been able to install mechanisms that prevent power from taking this form . Clastres contrasts the great Andean civilizations with the small political units with chiefs in the Amazon region; in the latter case the whole of society was constantly trying to prevent the chief from transforming his prestige into political power. Clastres thus provides a theory of the origin of the "oldest social specialization", the "specialization of violence" (Debord).

Clastres' main thesis is that the so-called “primitive” societies are not societies that have “not yet” discovered political violence and the state, but that, on the contrary, they are societies whose functioning is aimed at preventing the emergence of the State is directed. In the Archeology of Violence , Clastres turns against the structuralist and Marxist interpretations of the wars of the societies in the Amazon region. According to him, the war between the tribes is the way in which larger political entities and the delegation of power associated with them are prevented.

The so-called primitive societies refuse economic and political differentiation by preventing material abundance and social inequality.

«The history of societies without a history is […] the history of their struggle against the state. », La société contre l'État .

The prophetism of the Tupi-Guarani

Pierre Clastres took a keen interest in the Tupi-Guarani culture. The emergence of a special form of prophecy is characteristic of them. It differs from shamanism , which also occurs with the Tupi-Guarani. Clastres analyzes this form of prophecy as a response to the development of chiefdom. According to Clastres, at the time of the Conquests the Tupi-Guarani society was about to lose its status as a 'primitive' society as the influence of the chiefs increased and they slowly gained real political power. Prophetism led to a series of migrations towards the land without evil ("Terre sans mal"), a special phenomenon among the Tupi-Guaraní.

Fonts

Books

  • Chronique des indiens Guayaki , Plon, 1972, German Chronicle of the Guayaki: d. call yourself Aché, nomad. Jäger in Paraguay , Munich: Trickster-Verlag, 1984
  • La Société contre l'État , Minuit, 1974, German enemies of the state: Studies on political anthropology , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1976 (new edition: Konstanz University Press 2020, with an afterword by Andreas Gehrlach and Morten Paul)
  • Le Grand Parler. Mythes et chants sacrés des India Guarani , Seuil, 1974
  • Recherches d'anthropologie politique , Seuil, 1980
  • Mythology of India Chulupi , Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 1992
  • Archeology de la violence: la guerre dans les sociétés primitives , La Tour d'Aigues: Aube, 1999, German Archeology of Violence , Zurich / Berlin: diaphanes, 2008, ISBN 3-03-734017-7

items

  • Les Marxistes et leur anthropologie , in: Recherches d'anthropologie politique , Paris, Seuil, 1980, pp. 157-170.
  • Liberté, malencontre, innommable , in: Étienne de La Boétie , Le Discours de la servitude volontaire , Petite Bibliothèque Payot, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-228-89669-1 .
  • Archeology de la violence. La guerre dans les sociétés primitives , 1997 (republished, originally in the magazine in Libre , No. 1, 1977). Archeology of Violence, The Role of War in Primitive Societies , Autonomy , No. 8, August, 1977, pp. 25–42.
  • Preface to the French translation of Stone Age Economics ("Âge de Pierre, âge d'abondance", 1976) by Marshall Sahlins .
  • On torture in primitive societies in: Curare , Vol. 11, No. 1, 1988, pp. 45-50.
  • On the emergence of rule, an interview , Under the pavement is the beach , Vol. 4, 1977.
  • The Marxists and Ethnology , Under the Pavement Lies the Beach , Vol. 7, 1980.
  • Freedom, fatality, nameless , under the pavement is the beach , vol. 8, 1981.

Secondary literature

  • L'esprit des lois sauvages. Pierre Clastres ou une nouvelle anthropologie politique , hrg. by Miguel Abensour , Seuil, 1987.
  • Hélène Clastres , La terre sans mal. Le prophétisme Tupi-Guarani , Seuil, 1975.
  • L'anti-autoritarisme en ethnologie , actes du colloque ethnologique de Bordeaux du 13 avril 1995, Presse universitaire de Bordeaux, 1997.
  • Heike Delitz: Bergson Effects. Aversions and attractions in French sociological thinking , Weilerswist: Velbrück 2015, pp. 385–400.
  • Geertz, Clifford , Deep Hanging Out , The New York Review of Books , Vol. Xlv, no.16, Oct 22, 1998, pp. 69-72

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guy Debord, Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels , Berlin 1996, § 23, p. 21

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Clastres, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1977
Place of death Gabriac