The End of Potlatch: An Anthropological Approach to Nostromo

Abstract

This study contends that the various forms of archaic trade that anthropologists have reconstructed on the Northwest Coast of America are explanatory of plot-construction and characterization in Conrad's South-American novel. My thesis is that Nostromo is a figure defined by the practice of potlatch, and that his key presence in the plot entails the representation of a culturally dislocating transition from archaic transactions to modern commerce. The theoretical framework of this chapter hinges on the insights of Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Karl Polanyi, and Georges Bataille.

Citation

Juhász, T. (2006), "The End of Potlatch: An Anthropological Approach to Nostromo", Wood, D.C. (Ed.) Choice in Economic Contexts (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 25), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 285-298. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0190-1281(06)25013-3