Archaeology of Violence. War in Primitive Societies. Mikros Essay Collection.

“The best enemy of the state is war.”

This essay offers an innovative reflection on war. For Pierre Clastres, it is a way of pushing back political fusion, and thus of preventing the threat of a delegation of power leading to the excesses intrinsically linked to the excessive size of a society.

War and the state institution, placed in a relationship of exclusion, each implying the negation of the other, therefore condition each other.