Hello, Cython's __dealloc__ special method is meant to deal with cleaning up instances of cdef classes. However, this hooks tp_dealloc() and does not have meaningful access to Python attributes, since those might have been cleared by tp_clear(). I have a concrete use case where I want something like __dealloc__ but *before* Python attributes are cleared. So this really belongs in tp_clear(). Using a PyObject* attribute in the cdef class with manual reference counting is not a solution since this attribute could genuinely occur in a reference cycle. So I would suggest to support a __clear__ special method, which would then be called both by tp_clear() and tp_dealloc(). It's important to note that this should be idempotent: it will be called at least once before Python attributes are cleared but it may also be called later. PS: I never really understood the technical difference between tp_clear() and tp_dealloc(). It seems to me that these serve a very similar purpose: why can't the garbage collector just call tp_dealloc()? Jeroen.