The countercurrent: the Clastresian thought in Political Philosophy

Abstract

This paper studies the work of Pierre Clastres (1934-1977), a French philosopher and anthropologist whose ethnological studies focus on Political Anthropology seeking the investigation of power within the so-called primitive societies, by making a change in the determination of the study subject matter of this science. It intends to show the construction of his general political anthropology aimed to demystify Indigenous societies as societies without State, and to view them as societies against the State, opposed to the state organization which characterizes the European political community and most societies influenced (or determined) by their cosmovision. This paper is split into two stages: the first is dedicated to societies against the State, which the philosopher-anthropologist discussed about, seeking to trail the road that would lead him to expose the need of a Copernicus revolution in the studies on the origin of power. The second stage deals with the return of ethnographic and ethnologic studies to Political Philosophy, examining our characteristic of being unnamable, those who have forgone freedom in order to abide by a model of oppression, those who overcame undesired animality, but denatured themselves into vassals of other men, their equals.