Good Chiefs, Bad Chiefs, Big Chiefs: Cues on Amerindian Political Philosophy

Abstract

This article aims to establish a dialogue between Amerindian myths and Pierre Clastres’s thought. It follows Amerindian chiefs’ figures, present in the Americanist political anthropology debate and in myth. Myth is here taken as thought (cf. Lévi-Strauss), and albeit Clastres himself sometimes opposed myth and thought, myths such as the ones considered in this paper can be perceived as a reinforcement to his famous thesis on the Society against the State. These myths are here presented, along with other stories, as elements to be added to the image of the Amerindian “powerless chief ” – allowing us to introduce some modulations in it. Finally, it argues for the need to pursue the “Copernican revolution” proposed by Clastres, not in favour of a general theory of politics (or political anthropology, in his terms), but to seek the Amerindian terms in which politics is conceived and lived, an Amerindian political philosophy (Amerindian political anthropology?).