Barbosa, Pierre Clastres 368 SOCIALITY AGAINST THE STATE: THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF PIERRE CLASTRES

Clastres ‘de-substantializes’ the state, which is not ‘the Elysium, the White House, the Kremlin,’ but ‘an actualization of a relation of power.’ There is no reason, therefore, to believe that, in a Durkheimian mood, he has reified society. Even though he makes no use of the concept, I believe there is already a concept of ‘sociality’ at work in Clastres: hence, the idea of sociality against the state. In the three sections of this study, I show the role played by ‘society,’ the ‘state’ and ‘against’ in Clastres’s writings. In this way, I aim to demonstrate that his ethnography is filled with indications about how to deal with some of the continuing dilemmas of anthropology, such as: how can we avoid methodological individualism without becoming spellbound by a transcendental holism or vice-versa? How can we erect models of intentionality without a subject? How can we conceive of social relations without a society? And finally, how does the ‘objectivity’ of sociality work through the ‘subjectivity’ of personsin-interaction? ‘... something exists in absence.’ Pierre Clastres, 1974 1. Towards a Minor Shakespeare Carmelo Bene is fond of losers. In rewriting two classic plays by William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet and Richard III – he conducts a similar kind of ‘surgery’ in each. 2 In the first, he prematurely ‘amputates’ the gallant Romeo from the original story; in the second, he removes all the male lead characters apart from Richard III himself. This shoves Power off-stage, literally: the power of the families in Romeo and Juliet, and the apparatus of the State in Richard III. By applying a ‘minor treatment’ (Deleuze and Bene 1978: 96) to a ‘major playwright,’ Bene unleashes potentialities that had remained unexplored in Shakespeare, since something always exists in the apparent absences. 1 Independent researcher, holder of a Master’s degree from PPGAS/Museu Nacional/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, and MSc and PhD degrees in anthropology from the London School of Economics. E-mail: [email protected]. The Portuguese version of this article was published in Revista de Antropologia – USP/Universidade de São Paulo (Vol. 47, no. 2, July/December 2004: 529-576. It summarises the main points I developed in my Master’s dissertation, submitted to the Museu Nacional – UFRJ/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. This English version was translated from the Portuguese by David Rodgers. 2 This is how Deleuze describes the theatre of Carmelo Bene (Deleuze and Bene 1978: 97). The comments that follow are mostly based on Deleuze’s observations concerning Bene’s Richard III (ibid.: 85 ff.).