Introduction

There are endless possible strategies for dealing with the paradox, and each of them reflects the context, the immediate factors and the balance of forces that are pressing on a culture, a form of life, or even just an extemporary decision. The choice of expressing the anthropological paradox only in the form of a sharp opposition between "civilization" and "state of nature" is certainly not an invention of early-twentieth-century German ideology. For centuries it had been an essential part of the complex strategy by which European culture had managed to impose the modern order on the whole of the New World. Political responsibility for these theories lies in re-presenting that logic when that order had already been wrecked once and for all. The construction of a symbolic order – separated from indistinct potentiality – is actually a creative act that needs to draw on those very potentialities that it resists.