1. For a general account of Clastres’s career, see S. Moyn (2004) “Of Savagery and Civil Society: Pierre Clastres and the Transformation of French Political Thought,” Modern Intellectual History 1(1), 55–80;
2. this essay, focusing on Claude Lefort’s theoretical relationship with Clastres, is meant as a complement to my prior piece on Marcel Gauchet alone, which it revises in some respects: S. Moyn (2005) “Savage and Modern Liberty: Marcel Gauchet and the Origins of New French Thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 4(2), 165–88.
3. B. Flynn (2005) The Political Philosophy of Claude Lefort: Interpreting the Political (Evanston: Northwestern University Press), p. 125.
4. F. Dosse (1997) History of Structuralism, Vol. 1 (trans. Deborah Glassman) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 162.
5. P. Clastres (1962) “Échange et pouvoir: philosophie de la chefferie indienne,” L’Homme 2(1): 51–65,