From Claude Lévi-Strauss to Pierre Clastres: from exchange to the ‘philosophy of chieftainship’ to politics as a structural code

Abstract

May politics structure itself as a language and/or a code, in the sense given to this last term by Claude Lévi-Strauss´ Mythologiques? How can we think of politics in general, after Pierre Clastres´s relativization of coercitive power? May politics be understood from the perspective of the circulation of maussian prestations? If so, would that vision be enough for a comprehension in ontological terms of its constitution or should it be necessarily complemented by an understanding of the interrelationship of different codes, including the political one?