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The Question of Power: An Interview with Pierre Clastres
 9781584351832, 1584351837

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THE QUESTION OF POWER

© 20 12 Sens & Tonka. O riginally publ ished in issue 9 of L'Anti-Mythes on D ecember 14, 1974. ©This edition 20 15 by Sem iocexc(e)

All rights rese rved. No pare of chis book may be reproduced, sco red in a retrieval system , or transmitted by any mea ns, elecrronic, mechanical, photocopying, reco rdin g, or otherwise, without prior permission of th e publisher. Published by Semiotexc(e) PO BOX 629. South Pasadena, CA 9103 1 www. semio cexce.com Cover Photograph: Edward S. C urtis, Nuh!irnahla- Qagyuhf. cl914. Des ign: H edi El Kho lti ISBN : 978-1-58435-183-2

THE QUESTION OF POWER AN INTERVIEW WITH PIERRE CLASTRES Translated by Helen Arnold With a Preface by Miguel Abensour

semiotext(e)

Preface by Miguel Abensour

THE VOICE OF PIERRE CLASTRES

It is in no way surprising to find Pierre Clastres interviewed by L'anti-mythes, a periodical created in the effervescence of the postM ay '68 period in Caen by former students of Claude Lefort. The journal is known for taking particular interest in the history of the Socialisme ou Barbarie 1 group and for having published interviews with members of that then defunct group. Nthough Pierre C lastres never joined the group, he did feel close to the anti-bureaucratic scene and unreservedly shared its cr iticism of the USSR. This is corroborated by his note on Martchenko, published in the review 1. T he grou p Socit1lisme ott Brirbr1rie, founded in 1945 and self-di sban ded in 1967, engaged both in revolu tionary activism and in develop in g a cri tical theory of co ntemporary societies in which the same analysis was ap plied to both western ca pi talist societi es and bureaucratic capitalist societies including the USSR and C hina, and whi ch placed emp hasis on the fundamental div ision of society into order-givers and order-takers, rather than on formal ownership of prope rty. Although it remained very small- never more than several dozen members- it had a definite influence on the May 1968 movement, and on a number of important theore ticians, includin g Pierre C lastres. Cornelius Castoriad is and C laude Lefort, co-fo unders of the gro up, were among its most prominent members, known for their po li tical and social theoretical co ntributions. Despite their serious disagreements, they subsequently worked together in rwo periodicals, Textures ( 1970- 75) and Libre (1977- 80), along with Marcel Gauchet, a former student of Claude Lefort, who went on to write a number of books in which he cakes hi s di stance with radical criticism of liberal democracy. [Trans lator's note]

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Textures2 (issue 75 / 1O) whose editorial committee included Cornelius Castoriadis and C laude Lefo rt, among others. It was in that same issue that Marcel Gauchet began his long study of

Clastres' work. Interestingly, we might point out that the interview in L'Anti-mythes was followed by a brief text by Marcel Gaucher previously published in October 197 4 in Etudes de Marxologie, headed by Maximilien Rubel. A closer look shows that the interview with Pierre C lastres, published in issue 9 dated December 14, 1974, is in between the one with Cornelius Castoriadis (first semester 1974) and another with C laude Lefort (April 19, 1975). So it was definitely from within that constellation of radical anti-totalitarianism that C lastres gave his contribution to L'Anti-mythes. Later, shortly before his accidental death in the summer of 1977, he participated actively in the creation of the review Libre, which replaced Textures and published his last texts. As for the editors of L'Anti-mythes, one imagines they were stunned by Pierre C lastres' first writings, like so many others at the time, and were only too happy to give him an opportunity to expose the broad lines of his tremendously innovative work. Pierre Dumesnil, one of the threesome that conducted the interview, has described the visit. His description gives us an excellent idea of the intellectual climate at the time and of the tone of the talk: The majestic setti ng in which Pierre C lastres received us fo r our interview- Claude Levi-Strauss' office at the College de France- hardly im pressed us, any more than the life-sized effigy of an American Indian decked in his finest feathers chat it contained. We were there to hear the sin gu lar thoughts of a political ethno logist, and we cou ldn't care less about our surroundings. C lascres' first books Chronicle of the Guayaki (6)

Indians and the collection of articles in Society Against the State produced a stimulating shock in many of those who read them in France in the early 1970s. Enough so, in any case, for the tiny group that ran the journal L'Anti-Mythes in Caen (Normandie) to send three of its members to Paris to interview the author of those books. The contact was made by a good friend of several members of the group, Marcel Gauchet, a former student of Claude Lefort and like him a member of the editorial committee of the review Textures, whose somewhat sporadic publications we awaited impatiently. I remember the man as sti ll very young (he was barely over 40 and we had not yet turned 25), with the leanness of the long-range hiker, expressing himself very calmly- we made practically no changes when transcribing his words in to writing- concentrated on speaking accurately, and ma in taining some distance with his listeners. He was neither Marxist nor structuralist, but in spite of what some of our questions may have inferred, his answers expressed no hostility or irony toward those of his co lleagues who espoused those conceptions. Simply, composedly, he informed us chat the theorization of kinship norms or some supposed economic determinism are not basic to the issue of power. Because it was definitely that very political question that interested him, and continued to interest him throughout his too short life. In his comments on a new edition of La Boetie's The Discourse of Voluntary

Servitude, published a year before his death, he wrote: "How can it be, wrote La Boetie, that most people obey a single individual, and not on ly do they obey him but they serve him, and not on ly do they serve him but they serve him willingly?" There is no doubt that the question, more relevant than ever (7)

here and now, was also one he himself raised. But symmetrically, in those same comments, he spoke of a possible other world, one he had glimpsed during his stays with the Savages: "what do these primitive societies do to prevent inequality, divisions, and power relationships?" and he gives a beginning of an "answer": "they have no state because they don't want one, the tribe maintains a cleavage between chiefdom and power. ... " These societies are definitely, although of course unknowingly, societies against the state and not merely without a state. That this in terview, which embroiders on that assertion, is now available to English-speaking readers is excellent news for me, as was Paul Auster's lost and recently retrieved translation of the Chronicle ofthe Guayaki Indians. Perhaps it will be Pierre C lastres' fate to be constantly rediscovered, after being apparently forgotten- like La Boetie. For a man who, he too, died so young, that would be a very fine fate. A few years earlier, Georges Balandier had delineated, in his Political Anthropology, what Thomas Kuhn calls "normal science." So did Jean-William Lapierre, whose Essai sur le fondement du pouvoir politique (Essay on the foundations of political power) was targeted by C lastres in his essay "Copernic et !es sauvages" (Copernicus and the savages) . It was Pierre C lastres who was to set forth the revolutionary theses that gave birth to new paradigms and to a new political anthropology. There were three theses:

1. So-called primitive societies are truly societies without a state, not because of any lack or deficit, but because they refuse the state, to the point where they can be called "societies against the state" rather (8)

than "societies without a state." The shift from "without" to "against" points up a series of arrangements whose function it is to prevent, or block, the emergence of a political power separate from society. These mechanisms, taken as a whole, constitute a genuine, fully adult primitive politics. Where traditional political anthropology saw nothing, or merely embryonic states, this new anthropology is able to perceive a specific political societal institution whose purpose is to block the development of a state, inasmuch as it is opposed to the development of a separate political power. This means that politics exist before the state, leading to the conception of a fundamental distinction between politics and the state, or between politics and the sphere of the state. Thanks to the work of Pierre Clastres, we discover that there can be a political sphere, a form of political community, without there necessarily being a state. The consequences of this fundamental distinction are decisive: the state is toppled from its throne, so to speak. Far from being the fulfillment, the ultimate achievement of politics, the state turns out to be only one possible form among others, a regional form, and therefore not destined to be become universal. Because politics can unfold outside the state and against it. 2. The study of South American Indian tribes shows that the savage chief carries prestige- no small thing- but is bereft of power. This means that within this society he is located outside any sphere of power, and has no power to command or to turn the other members of the tribe into obedient subjects. The logic of primitive society, an undivided society, makes it remain undivided and obstructs any situation that would introduce a division between dominant and dominated individuals, and would allow a separate locus of power to come into being within the community. Nonetheless, the chief, (9 )

deprived of power as he is, is a fundamental element of primitive society. He is the one who, in relations with other communities, takes upon himself the group's will to exist as an undivided whole. If we take indebtedness as the criterion for assessing what power is wielded, it is clear that power is not separated from society, since it is the chief who is indebted to society rather than the opposite. The chief, who must be a good speaker, owes people speech, and he must know how to be generous, too, he owes people goods. The primitive chief is under surveillance; according to Clastres, society makes sure that his penchant for prestige doesn't turn into a desire for power. 3. Not only does Pierre Clastres show the opposition between societies without a state and those with a state, or more accurately, between societies where power is non-coercive and those where it is coercive; he encourages us to perform a Copernican revolution as well. That is, to completely reverse the way we look at things, making a radical about-face by which we have societies with a state gravitate around those that are opposed to the state, so as to open up and discover a previously unheard-of space of intelligibility and to completely renew our understanding of the political. After Clastres the important thing is to take societies against the state as the basis for understanding societies with a state rather than looking at societies without a state through the prism of the state, as if the meaning of those primitive societies was to be found in a logic of absence, or deficit, rather than in a logic of refusal. The interview with L'Anti-mythes is in fact a polemic paper. Pierre Clastres isn't refuting, he is asserting. What does he assert? That a society against the state does not contain "bits of power" as such, or ( IO)

power sequences," susceptible of becoming an embryonic state power. In doing so, he is combating what I would call the prevailing Foucaldism. Michel Foucault's thesis about the existence of micropowers has led people to see power everywhere-wrongly so. Felix Guattari, for instance, in spite of his admiration for Pierre Clastres, views the opposition between societies with a state and societies against the state as too complete, since he claims there are always some forms of power in every stateless society. This is why Clastres is so determined, in this interview, to reject the tendency to see power everywhere. He therefore takes care to stress the criteria defining power, and for the same reason he repeatedly outlines the distinction between power-based situations and those where power is not at stake. For there to be power, the society must be divided on the basis of a commanding-obedience relationship. Society must be divided into top-the dominant-and bottom-the dominated, who obey. A power that is not exerted is not power. Power is brought to bear by the fact that those on top force those on the bottom to pay a tribute in the form of alienated labor or in any other form. Clastres therefore professes a restrictive view of power in that it is specifically political and in that the power relationship takes the form of division. Once that political division exists there is an obligation to pay one's debt to the chief or to the dominant group. He is perfectly explicit on that point. "But what's the use of the tribute? First of all, it is a marker of power, it's the sign of power! ... The tribute is the sign of power and at the same time it's the means for maintaining it, the means of ensuring the permanency of the sphere of power ... " (p. 28). If there is no political division and if the obligation to pay a tribute is absent, then the power situation doesn't exist. Let's take the case of social norms, what we might call the normative power exerted by ( ti )

society on its members, or to be more accurate, on itself This is not political power. That power is not in the hands of a leader or of any particular domin ant group. These are norm s that society imposes on itself and through which it maintains and reproduces itself T hat power does not co rrespond to any political division , nor does it translate into any requirement of a tribute. It takes the form of education, learning norms, socialization. As C lastres concludes, we are not in th e sphere of political power here, nor in a situation of power. T he same is true of the sha man or medicine- man, who unquesti o nably possesses powers. As a doctor, he is the master of life and death. But the possession of powers is not being In Power, since those powers are not of a political nature. T he medicine- man is all the less susceptib le o f holdin g power in that he differs fro m the prophet. As we see, it is not enough for the observer to notice the existence of powers or o f power sequences, beyond that he must ask himself whether or not that power pertains to the political sphere. Two criteria are relevant here: is there a political division, and does the wieldin g of that power translate by the obligation of the dominated to pay a tribute ? O nce th e political nature of power is reasserted , it is no longer possible to take just any power situation and draw the conclusion that that power is susceptible of being transform ed into state power. As soon as these criteria are applied , the observer is definitely obliged to recognize that political power doesn't exist everywhere. I had the good fo rtune to attend Pierre Clastres' courses at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes (the French School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) for two years. T hose courses were absolutely unique. Pierre Clastres arrived with a large notebook that he never opened , and began to speak. H e talked rather meditatively, in a tone halfway between the academic ritual and a prophes izing ( 12)

ceremony. With difficult simplicity, as if expressing the outcome of a previous ascetic experience, he strived to return to the thing itself: in this case the enigma of the political institution of the societal dimension in savage societies, the enigma of chiefdom without power, external to power, the enigma of savage societies. T his interview, revealing his bluntness, his provocations and barely veiled irony- in short, what makes him inimitable-is infinitely precious in that it offers something close to those teachings-Pierre Clastres' tone, his voice. Listen to that vo ice, the voice of a man who is free and who calls for o ther people's freedo m. The voice of a m an listening intently to the Ache, sin gin g in the night, listening to La Boetie, and Rousseau, they them selves passers-on, listening to those "new peoples" from before the malencounter. All those voices entwined resonate and vibrate in the unique voice of Pierre C lastres.

Mi g uel Abenso ur, presid ent of th e College in te rn ationa l de Philosop hi c from L985 co L987, had previo usly pa rtici pated in the pe riod ica ls Libre and Textures. He is the cd icor of a co llective work o n Pi erre C lastres: l'esprit des lois srtuvttges (Pari s: Ed itio ns d u Sc uil , L987), a nd co-ed ico r, with An ne Ku piec, of Le Crthier Pierre Clastres (Pa ri s: Se ns & To n ka, 2 01 L). His own latest books inclu de Democnuy Against the Strtte (Cam b ridge: Po li cy Press, 20 LL ) Utopiques I : Le prods des m11itres reveurs (Pa ris: Se ns & To n ka, 201 3) a nd Utopiques 2: l'hormne est '"' rtnirnrtl utopique (Par is: Sens & To nka, 20 13) .

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AN INTERVIEW WITH PIERRE CLASTRES

I.: anti-mythes: What is your definition of "political anthropology"? How would you situate your present approach to anthropowgylethnology (with respect to structuralism in particular)? Pierre Clastres: Let's take the question of structuralism first. I'm not a structuralist, but it's not because I have anything whatsoever against structuralism, it's that as an ethnologist, I work on fields for which a structural analysis isn't relevant, in my opinion. For people who are studying kinship, or mythology, structuralism apparently works, as Levi-Strauss has clearly proved in his analyses of the elementary structures of kinship, or in his mythologies. Now, in what I study- let's say, grossly, it's political anthropology, the question of leadership and power- my impression is that that doesn't function, another type of analysis is required. Having said this, it's quite probable that ifl looked at a set of myths I would necessarily be structuralist, because I can't see how to analyze a set of myths outside of the structuralist framework ... other than by doing some inanity like psychoanalyzing myths or applying Marxism to themsay, "myths are the opium of the savages"-but that's not serious.

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You're not just talking about primitive societies: your questions about power are questions about our society. What is the basis of your approach? What justifies the transition frorn one to the other? The transition is implicit in the definition. I'm an ethnologist, which is to say that I study primitive societies, especially those in South America, where I did all my field work. Now, here we start with a distinction internal to ethnology or anthropology itself. What is a primitive society? It is a stateless society. To speak of a stateless society is necessarily to name the other societies, which is to say societies with a state. Where does the problem reside? What interests me, and why do I try to think it out? I wonder why stateless societies are stateless, and it seems to me that if primitive societies are stateless it's because they are societies that reject the state, they are against the state. The absence of the state in primitive societies doesn't reflect a lack, it isn't because they are still in the infancy of humankind, and so are incomplete, or because they aren't big enough, or aren't fully grown-up, adult, it is truly because they refuse the state in the broadest sense, the state defined by its minimal figure, which is the relationship based on power. By the same token, to speak of stateless societies or societies against the state is to talk about those with a state, so there is bound to be practically no transition at all, or one that is immediately possible. And the question inherent in the transition is: where does the state come from, what is the origin of the state? But still and all, there are two distinctly different questions: - how do primitive societies manage not to have a state? -where does the state come from? So what about "political ethnology"? If the question is "can the analysis of the question of power in primitive societies-in stateless {16)

societies-feed our political thinking about our own society?," the answer is definitely yes, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. I could very well confine myself to pure social anthropology, even if my questions are not completely academic: what do primitive societies do to avoid having a state? Where does the state come from? I can stop there, and remain purely and simply an ethnologist. And actually, that's what I do. But there is no doubt that any thinking and research on, basically, the origins of the division of society, or on the origins of inequality, in the sense that primitive societies are, precisely, societies that prevent hierarchical distinctions, that thinking and that research provide food for thought about what goes on in our society. And then, in fact, the question of Marxism comes up almost immediately. Could you be more specific? What are your relations with ethnologists with more Marxist leanings?

My relations with my Marxist colleagues are marked by disagreements about the work we do, and about what we write, but not necessarily by personal disagreements. Most Marxists are orthodox thinkers. I say most of them, since there are fortunately a few who are not, but the orthodox Marxists care more about a literal interpretation than about the spirit of it. So what is the theory of the state, in that sense? They have an instrumental conception of the state. That is, the state is the instrument of domination of the ruling class over other people; both logically and chronologically, the state comes afterwards, once the society has been divided into classes, and there are the rich and the poor, the exploiters and the exploited. The state is the instrument of the rich to better exploit and mystify the poor and the exploited. My impression, based on ( 17)

research and thinking that stay within the confines of primitive, stateless societies, is that the opposite is true: the initial division , the one that underlies all the others, in the last analysis, is not the divisio n into conflicting social groups, into rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. It's the divisio n between those who command and those who obey: that is, the state, because fundamentally, that's what the state is, it's the divisio n of society into those who are in power and those who are subj ected to that power. Once that ex ists, that commanding/obedience relationship- that is, a guy, o r a bunch of guys who give orders to the others, who obey- everything is possible from then on , because someone who gives orders, who is in power, has the power to make th e others do what he wants, prec isely because he has the power, he can tell them to work for him , and at that point the man in power can easily turn into an explo iter, into someo ne who makes others do the work. But the point is that when you give serious thought to the way primitive soc ieti es fun ction , as social machin es, yo u see no way for those societies to be divided, I mean to be divided into rich and poor. You don't see how, because everythin g is don e prec isely to prevent that from happenin g. On the other hand, you see a lot better, you · understand a lot more, and several unclear questions are clarified , in my opinion, if you assume that the power relationship comes first. T hat's why I think that if we want to gain a better understanding of these issues, we have to turn the M a rxist theory of th e origins of the state co mpletely upside down- that's an enormous point, and also a very precise one. It seems to me that the state is fa r from bein g the instrument by which o ne class do minates the others, and therefore something that appears following a previous division o f society. It's the opposite, it's the state that produces classes. T his can be shown using examples of non-Western societies with a state, and I (18)

am thinking of the Andean, Inca state, in particular, but we could also take a number of other perfectly Western examples, and even one more contemporary example, the USSR. I'm simplifying of course, I'm no specialist of Russia, nor am I a Kremlinologist . .. bur after all, taken together, viewed from a distance, but not from too far off, what did the 1917 Russian revolution do? It did away with class relationships, by simply eliminating one class, the exploiters, the bourgeois, the large landowners, the aristocracy and the state machinery that went along with everything the monarchy stood for, the outcome being that what remained was what might be said to be an undivided society since one term of the split had been eliminated. What remained was an undivided society, topped by a state machinery (thanks to the Communist party) holding the power for the benefit of the people, the workers and peasants. O.K. So what is the USSR today? Except if you're a Communist Party militant, in which case you believe the USSR embodies socialism, the workers' state, etc., barring any rheology and catechism, if you're not completely blind and so on, what is the USSR? Ir's a class society. I don't see why we should hesitate to use that vocabulary; it's a class society and a class society that developed purely out of a state machinery. That seems to me a good illustration of how classes-the rich and the poor, exploiters and exploited-develop; that is, how that particular division , that economic division of society develops starting with the existence of a state machinery. The Soviet state, centered around the Communist party, created a class society, with a new Russian bourgeoisie that is certainly no less ferocious than the most ferocious 19th century European bourgeoisies, for instance. I'm sure of that, and when I make the apparently surrealistic claim that it is the state that creates classes, this is illustrated by examples from worlds completely different from our own, such as the Incas or the (19 )

USSR. Take specialists in, say, ancient Egypt or other regions, or other cultures, societies that Marx called Asian despotism or what other thinkers called hydraulic civilization. I think they would probably tend to agree with me, they would show how political division is the starting point which very easily generates an economic division; that is, those who obey become the poor and exploited at the same time, and those who command become the rich and the exploiters. That's perfectly normal because if you hold power, it's to use it, power that isn't wielded isn't power, and what is the vector for wielding power? Obliging others to work for you. It's not at all the existence of alienated work that creates the state, I think it's exactly the opposite, it's power, holding power, that generates alienated work. What is alienated work? "I don't work for myself, I work for others," or rather, "I work a little for myself and a lot for others." He who holds power can say to the others, "You are going to work for me." And that's where alienated work begins! The first and most universal form of alienated work was the obligation to pay a tribute. Because if I say, 'Tm the one who has power and you are subjected to me," I have to prove it, and I prove it by making you pay a tribute; that is, by diverting part of your activity for my exclusive benefit. This in itself makes me not only the person with power, but the one who exploits others. There is no state machinery without that institution known as the tribute. The first move made by a man of power is to demand a tribute, the payment of a tribute by those over whom he wields his power. Now, you will ask, "why do they obey? Why do they pay the tribute?" That, precisely, is the question of the origins of the state. I don't quite know, but there is something in the power relationship that does not have to do with violence only. That would be too simple, that would solve the problem right ofr. Why does the state (20)

exist? Because at some point, here or there, some guy or some group of guys says, "We have the power and you are going to obey." But then, one of two things can happen: either the listeners say, "yes, that's true, you have the power and we are go in g to obey," or they say "no, no, you don't have the power, and the proof is, we aren't going to obey you," and then they may call the others crazy, or "let's kill them." Either you obey or you don't, and at some point, necessarily, that power was acknowledged, since the state developed here and there, in various societies. In fact, the question of the origins of that power relationship, the origins of the state, is a two-part one, in my op inion, in that there is the question of those on top and of those on the bottom: - The question of the top is: how is it that in some place, at some time, someone says 'Tm the boss and you're go ing to obey me"? That's the question of the top of the pyramid. -The question of the bottom, of the base of the pyramid, is: why do people agree to obey, when there isn't one person or group of people with enough strength, a great enough capacity for violence, to make terror reign over the entire group? There is something else, then; that consent to obedience harks back co something else. I don't quite know to what. I'm a researcher, so I search. But all we can say for the time being, it seems to me, is that although the question is relevant, there is no obvious answer. But we can't forego the question of the bottom, of why people agree to obey, if we are to seriously reflect on the question of the origins of the power relationship, and on the question of the origins of the state.

Those were the two questions Rousseau raised already at the beginning of The Social Contract, when he said: never will a man be strong (2 1)

enough to always be the strongest, and yet the state exists; what grounds political power, then? My impression, when reading Society Against the State, was that there is a similarity between your approach and Rousseau's, with a very significant anchor point: the reference to small societies (Rousseau talks about Geneva, Corsica, the small Swiss valleys) with a quest that arrives at the question of the origins ofpolitical power. It isn't a quest. It's what primitive societies teach me ... Here we're taking a slightly different angle, but in fact we're still in the same field. What are the requisites for a society being stateless? One requisite is that it be small. In this respect I come close to what you just said about Rousseau. It's true, primitive societies share the fact of being small, I mean population-wise, territory-wise, and that's a fundamental requisite for the absence of development of a distinct locus of power in those societies. From that perspective, primitive, stateless societies and societies with a state are opposites on every point: primitive societies are on the side of what is small, limited, scaled down, constantly splitting, multiple, whereas societies with a state are exactly the opposite; they are on the side of growth, integration, unification, oneness. Primitive societies are concerned with multiplicity; non-primitive societies, with a state, are societies of oneness. The state is the triumph of oneness. You just mentioned Rousseau; we could also mention someone else who raised that basic question I put a little while ago, which is what I called the question of the bottom: why do people obey when they are infinitely stronger and more numerous than the person who commands? It's a mysterious question, a relevant one in any case, and it was raised a very long time ago and perfectly clearly by La Boetie in The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. It's an old question, (22 )

but that doesn't mean it's no longer relevant. I don't think it's old hat at all, to the contrary, it's time to get back to that question, which means to get a bit out of the "Marxist" quagmire in which the reality of society is reduced to the economy, grossly speaking, whereas it is possibly to be found more in the political. You said that you encountered the problem ofMarxism naturally. Don't you also encounter the psychoanalytic grid ofanalysis, and why don't you talk about it?

Now that's something else. I must say I'm practically illiterate when it comes to psychoanalysis. So my lack of references stems from my lack of culture. Secondly, I have no need for it. I don't need to refer to the psychoanalytic interpretation for what I am looking for. Maybe chis limits me, or makes me lose time, but for the time being I haven't felt any need for it. And I must say, furthermore, that the few papers I have read that span ethno logy and psychoanalysis haven't spurred me to go in that direction. When I talk about a desire for power, or on the other end, of a desire for subjection, in my discussion of the question of power, I'm well aware chat "desire" is part of the vocabulary and gear of psychoanalysis; but then, I might just as well have taken it from Hegel or even Karl Marx, and that is actually where my references tend to come from. Very simply, I don't know much about it; I know next to nothing about psychoanalysis, and I don't feel the lack. Naturally, ifl feel I'm down a dead alley some day, and that psychoanalysis can get me out of it, I'll make an effort ... But for the time being, no, I have no need for that tool. To the contrary, I think that would muddle my ideas; for ideas, it's not a big deal, but that would muddle reality.

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You say that the basis of the distinction between primitive and nonprimitive societies is that one is divided and the other is undivided. But it seems to me that if the Guayaki aren't divided into rich and poor, exploiter and exploited, there is another kind of division, between men and women of course, and also normal/deviant. In the Chronicle of the Guayaki lndians,for example, you took the case of two homosexuals: one adjusts to the norms, while the other doesn't. What sort ofpower is exerted on him to make him feel that his position is abnormal? We're far afield here. What sort of power? How can I put it ... the point of view of the group, of the community, the societal ethic. Here, we have a specific case: the Guayakis are- were, since we now have to refer to chem in the past tense- a hunter society. So a fellow who isn't a hunter there is almost a complete minus. This guy has no choice, then; not being a hunter, he is practically no longer a man. From there it isn't a far throw to the other side, the other sector of society, which is the women's world. But I don't know if we can talk in terms of power. In any case, it isn't power in the sense we have used so far, power of a political nature.

Would that be non-coercive power? But is it because you don't see any power crystallized in any one person that you claim it's a power-free society, precisely because it isn't crystallized in a few individuals? Yet there is a division, nonetheless, and social disapproval, the result being that individuals don't act just any which way. With a married couple, for instance, the man who refuses to let his wife have a second husband (in Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians) finally gives in after a while. So power exists after all, since there are behavioral norms?

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Those norms have the support of the entire society, they aren't imposed on society as a whole by a specific group. They're the norms of the society itself; they're the norms through which society perpetuates itself, norms that everyone respects; they aren't imposed by anyone. The norms of primitive societies, their taboos, etc., are like our laws, you always have a little leeway. Except that here, those norms aren't those of a special group within society, which imposes them on the others; they are the norms of society itself It isn't a question of power. And in fact, whose power? Over whom? It's the power of society taken as a unified whole, since it isn't divided, it's the power of society as a whole over the individuals that comprise it. And how are those norms learned, acquired, internalized? By life, children's education, etc. We aren't in the field of power. Just as a father's "power" over his children in primitive society, or a husband's power over his wife, or wives if he has several, has nothing to do with the power relationship I view to be the essence of the state, of the state machinery. The power of a father over his children has nothing to do with the power of a chief over the people who obey him; that's completely different. We mustn't mix up those different spheres. There is a spatial division, usually predicated as primordial by Henri Lefebvre and the Situationists, it's the division between the city and the countryside. In Chron icle of the Guayaki Indians, and especially in the chapter "The Bow and the Basket" in Society Against the State, you point out another division, between men's space and women's space. What does that division refer to?

In this case, the division is a normal one. Don't forget we're talking about nomadic hunters; it's normal that there be two rather (25 )

well-defined spaces, since hunting is men's business and it takes place in the forest. This is definitely forest country anyway, and everyone is in the forest, but there's a distinction between the camp where you stop to sleep and eat, etc., which is everyone's space (including men, women, children, the elderly) and the forest, which is strongly connoted by those who spend their time there: men, as hunters. Aside from that, the fact is that because of the demographic composition of the Guayaki-there were more women than menthe camp was more identified with women than with men, particularly since men go hunting with other men, while the women stay in the camp with the children. So we definitely can define two spaces, without exaggerating that opposition: - the forest is the space for hunting, the space of game and of men in their hunter role; - the camp tends to be a female space, with children, cooking, fami ly life, etc. However, that doesn't involve anything reminiscent of a power relation of any sort, of some people over others. In fact, space divided into town and countryside is a hierarchical, authoritarian space. Is it that there isn't the sarne hierarchical relationship between the two spaces here?

No, not at all! Even if we take other cases-because this is a special case, these are nomadic hunters (after all, a society of nomadic hunters is very rare, or rather, it was very rare ... ), even if we take the most usual case, which involves primitive societies of sedentary farmers (that was the case of practically all South American Indians, and I'm not talking about the Andes, I'm talking about the ones living in the forest, the completely-naked-Indians-with-feathers, (26)

I mea n Amazonia .. . almost all of them are sedentary farm ers, even if they do go hunting, fishin g, gatherin g . .. they are sedentary farm ers), there is no distinction between the village, as the first likeness to the town , and the countryside. Th at's a completely differe nt story. T he distinction between town and countryside develops when there is the town , with people who aren't villagers, because villagers have to do with the village, but who are bourgeois, people who live in the bourg (town) , with chiefs. T hat's where the chiefs live at first. T he town and th e distinction between the town and the countryside develop alon g with and after the development of the state, because the state, or the figure of the despot, immedi ately settles in a cente r, with its fortresses, its temples, its sho ps . .. So there is necessarily a distin ction between the center and the rest; the center becomes the town , and the rest turns into the countryside. But that distinction does n't wo rk at all in a primitive society, although there are some really sizeable primitive communities. Size doesn't make the difference: whether you're talking about a band of some 30 G uayaki hunters or a G uarani village of 1,500 people, there is absolutely no split between town and countryside. T hat split occurs when there is a state, when there is the chief, and his res idence, and his capital, and his depots, military barracks, temples, and so on . Tow ns are created by the state: that's why towns and cities are as old as the state. Where there's a state, there is a town ; where there is a power rel ation there is a distinction between town and countryside. Unavoidably, because all those people who live in the town, around th e man in command, they have to eat, they have to live, and so it's the others, those who are outside the town , who are in the countryside, who work for them. And in fac t, that's why you could even say that the fi gure o f the peasant, as such, appears within the state (27)

machine; the peasant lives and wo rks in the country partially for th e benefit of chose who are in town and who command. That is, he pays the tribute, he pays the tribute in the form of personally rendered services, which may be compulsory work or produce from hi s fields ... Bue wh at's the use of the tribute? First of all, it is a marker of power, it's the sign of power! T here is no ocher way of demonstrating the fact of power. T he tribute is the only vehicle. If I say, 'Tm the chief, I'm in power," how am I goin g co show it? By asking yo u fo r so methin g, and that so mething is called a tribute. T he tribute is the sign of power and at th e same time it's the mea ns fo r maintainin g it, the means of ensuring the permanency of the sphere of power, includin g all the peopl e around the chief. And the burea ucracy starts to expand ve ry quickly once there's a chief, a despo t. H e is soon surrounded by people who secure his power, such as bodyguards and warriors. T hey can very easily be turned into specialized administrators in charge of collecting the tribute, co un tin g it, or keepin g records, that is, into statisticians and priests. T he whole range of soldiers, administrators, scribes, and priests develops really quickly with and around the fi gure of the chief. All you need is a so mewhat wide-ranging field of application of the power relati on, and from then on you find everythin g that develops around the figure of the chief: the priests, the military, the scribes, administrato rs, inspectors, etc., and court life, an aristocracy. All those peo ple aren't go ing co do any work, because they have something else co do, in fact. It isn't even out o f laziness, or a desire to enj oy li fe, like the master in H egel 's wri tings, but because they have something else co do, they have co be priests, generals, civil servants, etc. They can't do that and also till the fields and ra ise animals, so they need other people to do that for them.

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There are witch-doctors-shamans- in primitive society. How do you explain their role? This brings us back, to so me extent, to what we were talking about earlier, to the ambiguities of the word "power."

Yes, I think that actually a number of our questions revolve around that sort ofambiguity, which is: the coercion that ensures social cohesion, and on the other hand, political power; and I think you make a clear distinction between the two, whereas it isn't quite as clear for us. That's perhaps the point that "shocked" us most, among all the questions we had. First of all, yo u say coercio n, but there is no coercion in primitive societies.

For example, the obligation to reciprocate, to give and return, to receive and return. Exchange and reciprocity! It would be absurd to deny, say, the obligation to exchange, to exchange goods and services, as well as to exchange women so as to respect the rules of matrimony, and first and foremost the prohibition of incest. But the exchange of goods that goes on every day, that's visible, mostly involves food. In fact one hardly sees what else might circulate. Who exchanges with whom? Who are the people involved in that network of circulation of goods? They're mostly relatives. Here, kin ship goes beyond co nsa nguinity, and includes allies, brothers-in-law a nd so forth. It's a n obligation, but pretty much in the sa me way as we are obliged to give a nephew a gift, or to bring our grandmother flowers. (29)

Furthermore, it's a network that defines what we might call social insurance. Who ca n an individual in a primitive society count on? On his kin. T he way to show your kin and your allies that in case of need you hope to be helped by them is to offer them food. T here is an ongoing circuit oflittle gifts. It's simple: when a wom an cooks, when the meat or whatever is ready, you immediately see the woman herself, or a child sent by her, send a little bit, practically a symbolic portion of the food- it doesn't represent a meal- to soand-so, and to someone else, and som·eone else again, almost always relatives or allies. Why do they do that? Because they know that the others, in turn , will do the same, that those people can be counted on in case of need, in a catas trophe. It's insurance, social security. It's a social security th at does n't com e fro m the state, it comes from kinship. But a savage would never offer something to someone from whom he ca n expect nothin g. That would never even occur to him! T hat's why the sphere of exchanges is limited- I ~ouldn't say exclusively, but mainly- to the network of kinship and alliances. Now, the re may o f cou rse be other kinds o f excha nge, whi ch have a differe nt fun ction. T hey are more ritualized, and have to do with one community's relations with another co mmuni ty, for example. H ere we are talking about "international relations," so to speak. Those exchanges I've been talking about, between kin and between allies, take place within the community. You mentioned shamans, ea rlier: it's true, unquestionably, the shaman is probably the ma n wh o has, say, the most power. But what kind of power? It's not at all a power of a political nature. I mean , its locus, its inscription in society isn't at all a locus from which he may say, "I am the chief, so you are go ing to obey me." Absolutely not. There are shamans in various groups who have more or less of a reputation , dependin g on how great a shaman they are. (30)

So me have a tremendous reputation , chat is, one chat extends very far, co groups chat do n't even know chem. T he shaman, as medicineman, which is co say as master of illn ess, is th e master of life and death. If he cakes care of so meo ne he removes che sickness from the patient's body; he is the master of life. And as such he gives care and heals. Bue at the same time, he is necessarily the master of death ; th at is, he handles sickness, and if he is able to wre nch the sickness ... or rather, to wrench a person from sickness, then conversely, he is capable of casting sickness o n someo ne. So bein g a shaman isn't a sinecure, because if something abnormal occurs within che society (either the shaman's cures fa il repeatedly, or so mething else happens) the shaman will be the preferred scapegoa t for the group. H e will be viewed as respo nsible fo r whatever happens, fo r anything abnorm al chat occu rs within chat society for thin gs tha t fri ghten or wo rry people. H e will be accused because, bein g che mas ter of life he is the mas ter of d eath. Peo pl e will say " it's him ," he's the o ne who th rows curses, he's the o ne who makes children sick, a nd so o n. What happens, the n? Well , mos t o f th e tim e th e shama n is kill ed. T hey kill him. T hat's why I said before that the shaman's job isn't a sin ecure. Bue in any case, the prestige and respect a shaman may receive fro m a tribe do n't give him the sli ghtest poss ibili ty of fo undin g a state, of sayi ng, 'Tm in co mmand." H e wouldn't even chink of it. Isn't his prestige open to question? H e isn't necessarily what you might call a sacred figure. I n the two "tales" you relate about shamans they are made fun of

But shamans aren't in the sacred sphere at all. T he Indians' relatio n co the shaman isn't anything like that o f the Andea n Indians of the (3 1)

old days coward the Incas, or of C hristians, here, toward the Pope. Simply, they know that if they're sick they can count on him , and also that you have to watch out for him because he has powers. H e doesn't have T he Power, he has powers, which is not at all the same thing. Because he has his helper spirits with him , to help out (why and how is he aided by helper spirits? Because he learn ed, it cakes a long time to become a shaman, it takes years and years of- let's call it studies), he has powers but that will never give him power, he doesn't want it! What good would it do him? And then, he'd be the laughing stock! We should definitely no t look for the o rigins of power in the shaman's pres tige, it seems co me. T hat's certainly not where it is.

H e's "inspired".. . Is there a connection between the shaman and the p rophet? None whatsoeve r. You have to see shamans for what they are: doctors. T hey take ca re o f people and at the same time they kill enemi es . A shaman cares for the people in his co mmuni ty, and he ca res for people in allied co mmuniti es if as ked to , and he kills e nemi es. In chat sense he is a pure instrument of the community. How does he kill ? H e kills in shaman fashion, he calls out his army of helper spirits and he sends them to kill the enemies. So that in a given co mmunity a child , fo r example- or so meo ne else-dies: the local shaman didn't succeed in healing him. What will they say? "It's the shaman of such and such a group who killed chat perso n," whence the need to cake reve nge, to orga nize a raid, and so forth. T hat's what the shaman is about. H e acts as doctor within the co mmunity and as war machine for th e community against its enemi es. A prophet is never a docto r, he doesn't give care. Actually, (32 )

to take a South American example, there have been prophets among the Tupi-Guarani, but the chroniclers all distinguish perfectly clearly between shamans, who are sorcerers and doctors, on the one hand, and prophets on the other. Prophets speak, they go from one community to another, from one village to another, making speeches. They have a special name, "carai''; whereas shamans are called "paje." The distinction is perfectly clear. I actually think we can go a bit farther and say that prophets are not former shamans. That's a completely different figure. In a footnote to Geronimo's memoirs, he is defined as a war shaman. What do you think that means? I have no idea. It's not very important. Geronimo was a warrior chief. He may have had some shamanic talents as well, and known some special chants. But he was essentially a warrior chief.

We might pursue the question of war; that is, what is the status of war in primitive societies? Which brings us back to the problem of whether we should talk about isolated societies, or groups ofsocieties, or relations between groups. Is war an exceptional occurrence, or isn't it actually part of the everyday life of the community, in the last analysis? Inasmuch as we talk about the chief's role in wartime, what does that mean? Is it an exceptional occurrence or rather, isn't it the horizon of all social life? It's a fact: war is written into the very core of p.rimitive societies. I mean that a primitive society can't function without war; therefore, war is permanent. To say that war is permanent in primitive society doesn't mean that savages are out warring from dawn to dark every (33)

day. When I say that war is permanent, I mean that for any given co mmunity, th ere a re always enemies out there so mewhere, people susceptible of attacking us. T hat attack only occurs very occasionally, but the hostile relations betwee n communities are ongoing; that's why I say that war is permanent, the state of war is permanent. Why? H ere we come back to what we were sayin g at the beginnin g about the size of societies. I talked about the requisites for a society to be p rimitive. One requisite, an all-importa nt on e, is the size of the society, o r co mmuni ty. A society cannot be both large and p rimitive, or at least that's what I think. Fo r a society to be primitive it has to be small. For a society to be small it has to refuse to be large, and to refuse to be large there's somethin g of a technique, universally used in primitive societies, or at least in American societies, and that is splitting, breaking up. T hat may do ne in a perfectly fr iendly way when the gro up feels- judges-that its populatio n has grow n beyond the optimum level , and there is always someo ne wh o suggests that a number of people leave. As a rule, these separatio ns go alo ng kinship lin es; there may be a gro up of bro thers who decide to fo und a no ther co mmuni ty, which will of co urse be allied to the one they leave, since they are not only allies but relatives. But they do found ano ther co mmunity, so there is this ongo in g process of splitting up. But war is equally importa nt here, since primi tive war, war in primitive societies-that perm anent state of war I mentioned , a state of war that beco mes effective from time to time- really depends on the society. All or almost all primitive societies are warlike, bu t more or less intensely so. T here are so me very bel ligerent peo ples, and others that are less so, but actually, war is o n the horizo n fo r all of them, in any case. Wh at are the effects of war? T he effects of war are to maintain the separation between co mmunities. (34 )

',

The only relations you can have with enemies are hostile ones, implying separation. That separation and hostility culminate in actual war, but the effect of war and of the state of war is to keep communities separate, to divide them. The main effect of war is to constantly create multiplicity, thanks to which the possibility of existence of the opposite of multiplicity doesn't exist. As long as inter-community relations are in a state of separation, co ldness or hostility, as long as each community is and remains self-sufficient by that means-we might practically say self-managing- there can be no state. War, in primitive societies, is firstly a way of preventing oneness; oneness is above all unification; that is, the state.

Could we go bacle to that splitting up? You say that they were small societies, and as soon as they began to grow they split up. How do you account for the fact that Tupi-Guarani societies reached such huge proportions? Why didn't that splitting mechanism work any longer? I don't have any very accurate answer there, except on the figures . What made the Tupi-Guarani so unusual in South America was the very large size of the tribes and communities forming what I call Tupi-Guarani society. To the point where one necessarily imagines a sort of population explosion, relatively speaking: this isn't China or India. That population explosion actually led the Tupi-Guarani to a sort of territorial expansion, they occupied a huge territory, most probably because they needed living space. Since they were both very numerous and very warlike, they went out and chased away the occupants they found and took over the place; they chased them away or killed them, or took them into the group .. . I don't know. But in any case, they arrived and took the other people's place once they had thrown them out. (35)

So why did that happen? I mean why did they experience such an incredible population growth? I have no idea. And it isn't only an ethnological problem. It's problematic for all kinds of people, such as geneticists, ecologists and so forth. I really don't know what to say. What I can say, in any case (it's something that is increasingly clear as researchers pursue their work on the population of primitive societies) is that, let's say, primitive societies are "coding societies," to use the Anti-Oedipus vocabulary. Let's say that a primitive society is all sorts of flows circulating, or to take another metaphor, a machine with its organs. Primitive society codes- that is, controls, keeps a firm grasp on-all those flows, all those organs. What I mean here is that it keeps a firm grasp on what may be called the flow of power; it grasps it tightly and holds it in, doesn't let it out, for if it lets it out, then there is a conjunction between a chief and power, and then we are in the minimal figure of the state, which is to say the initial division of society (between those who command and those who obey). It doesn't allow that to happen. Primitive society keeps control over that organ called leadership. But there does seem to be one flow that primitive societies sometimes have trouble controlling, and that is the population flow. It is often said that primitive societies know how to control their size; sometimes that's true, sometimes not. Obviously, when the Tupi-Guarani were first discovered- that is, at the beginning of the 16th century- that didn't bother them, because they were expanding, territorially, so there was no problem. But there would have been a problem, for example, if their desire, or rather, their need for territorial expansion had met up with adversaries who were determined to protect the land they wanted to occupy. What would have happened then? When the population is developing and the territory (36)

is closed, then there are problems. Here we have somethingdemography-that is perhaps beyond control in primitive societies. They have a lot of techniques for controlling the population. They constantly resort to abortion, infanticide is very frequent, and there are a great many sexual taboos. For instance, as long as a woman hasn't weaned her baby (children are weaned when they are two or three), sexual intercourse is almost universally prohibited between that woman and her husband. If the woman has a baby (as I said earlier, prohibitions and taboos are made to be respected, but also to be disobeyed) or is pregnant before her last-born is weaned, the chances are great that she will abort or that the baby will be killed at birth. In spite of that, population growth may be considerable in the context of a savage economy and ecology ...

Many of our questions have to do with the problem of language: for one thing, language is presented as the source of coercive power (through the word of the prophet) and for another, language is the opposite of violence. We're talking about coding again. As we know, in America (and not only in America, that too is apparently universal), the leader, head of the tribe, the chief in primitive societies, must have various qualities that qualify him for that function. And among other qualities, there is the need to be eloquent, to be a good speaker. That is constantly evident. Now we can say it's because the savages like flowery discourse; they enjoy listening to a good orator, which is true, they love it. But I think we have to go farther: that obligation according to which you can't be acknowledged as a chief if you aren't a good speaker contains something through which a community, when it recognizes someone as its leader, traps him in language. It (37 )

traps the leader in language, in the speeches he makes, the words he pronounces. It isn't just the pleasure of listening to good speeches. But at a deeper level, not a conscious one of course, that has to do with the political philosophy involved in the very functioning of a primitive society. The leader, or chief-that is, the person who might be in power, be the commander, or order-giver- can't become that because he is trapped in language, trapped in the sense that his obligation is an obligation to speak. As long as he is in the medium of language, in that particular kind of language (because giving an order is also speech ... ), he can't free himself of that obligation to be a good speaker. If it crossed his mind to change over to another kind of language, which is the language of commanding (he gives an order and the order is obeyed), he wouldn't be able to. Personally, my understanding of that obligation to be a good speaker is unquestionably that it is one of the many ways used by a primitive society to maintain the split between leadership and power. As long as the chief is in the medium of discourse, and of what I have called "edifying discourse," which is empty discourse, he isn't in power. He tells the story of the tribe, why it is the way it is .... Yes, it's a profoundly conservative discourse. But what does it conserve? Society itself. It's a discourse against change, including the greatest of all changes that could occur in a primitive society: the one that would allow some man to address society, saying, 'Tm the chief and from now on you're going to obey me." So the chief is a good speal