The paradox is irresoluble: the less one culture communicates with another, the less likely they are to be corrupted, one by the other; but on the other hand, the less likely it is, in such conditions, that the respective emissaries of these cultures will be able to seize the richness and significance of their diversity. The alternative is inescapable: either I am a traveller in ancient times, and faced with a prodigious spectacle which would be almost entirely unintelligible to me and might, indeed, provoke me to mockery or disgust; or I am a traveller of my own day, hastening in search of a vanished reality. In either case I am the loser … for today, as I go groaning among the shadows, I miss, inevitably, the spectacle that is now taking shape.
此一悖论无法解决：一种文化于另一种文化交流越少，它们就越不可能为对方所腐蚀；但另一方面，在这种情形下，这两种文化各自的使者也就越不可能掌握 它们之间差异的丰富性和重要性。选择在所难免：要么，我作为一个在古代旅行的旅行者，面对一个奇异的景象，或许我几乎全然无法理解它，或许它让我确实感到 好笑或者恶心；要么，我作为一个在自己时代旅行的旅行者，匆匆地寻觅着那已失去踪影的现实。在两种情形下，我都是一个失败者……因为如今，当我悲伤地走在 现实的影子中时，我势必错失此刻正在成形的那个景象。
—laud Levi-Strauss “Tristes Tropiques”
列维·斯特劳斯《热带的忧郁》
这种“人类学方面的怀疑”不仅仅指知道自己一无所知，也指义无反顾地以自己的所知甚至是自己的无知来面对与自己最珍视的想法和习惯最相冲突的那些想法和习惯所强加的侮辱和拒绝。
—列维·斯特劳斯《文化人类学》
November 7, 2007
