Clastres contra Rousseau: a filosofia à luz da etnologia

Abstract

An attentive reader of Rousseau, although barely quoting him on his texts, Clastres deploy the same vocabulary that became famous under the pen of the citizen of Geneva, sometimes distancing himself from his thoughts: 1) allusion to the general will; 2) the enactment of civil society’s founding gesture of enclosing a land and the possessive discourse that accompanies it and inaugurates private property (“this is mine”); 3) and, finally and most importantly, the criticism directed at the two fronts that grounds Rousseau’s narrative about the origin of the State: on the one hand, the association between the desire for prestige and the will to power; on the other, the economic foundation of political power. If it is correct to say that the Archaeology of Violence is against Hobbes or an inversion of Hobbes’ argument – once this is the point where Clastres politicizes war – , in turn, the Society against the State is to some extent against Rousseau or an inversion of Rousseau’s argument, as it stands against the hypothetical narrative of Western history: no longer from economics and prestige to politics, but from politics to economics, because that's where Clastres politicizes the economy.