The Pierre Clastres Turn. Societies against the State and the Institution of the Social: Clastres, Lefort, Gauchet

Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, a group of French thinkers gravitating around journals such as Textures and Libre worked on a common theoretical project: they intended to critique Marxism, structuralism, and human sciences, seeing the social field as a symbolic institution. Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Marcel Gauchet, Miguel Abensour, Marc Richir, and Pierre Clastres are the main figures of this group. This article investigates the role that Clastres’ thought played in this project and debate. After presenting the historical and theoretical backdrop to these scholars’ work – the influences of anthropology, structuralism, Marxism, and phenomenology – the text maps out the contours of their common theoretical project. The subsequent sections focus more closely on Lefort and Gauchet’s thinking in order to understand their relationship to Clastres’ ideas.