The Question of Power: An Interview with Pierre Clastres
THE QUESTION OF POWER
AN INTERVIEW WITH PIERRE CLASTRES
Translated by Helen Arnold
With a Preface by Miguel Abensour
“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 ‘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.”
L’Anti-Mythes, a journal published in Caen, France,
by some ex-students, focused particularly on the history
of the political group Socialisme ou Barbarie and
organized a series of interviews with several members
viewed as representative of different aspects of the
group’s activities: Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort,
Daniel Mothé and Henri Simon. L’Anti-Mythes also
published this long interview with Pierre Clastres,
which has become a reference over the years. Simple
in its exposition, uncompromising on the content,
The Question of Power is a crucial introduction to
the ethnologist’s thinking.
60 pages.