Abstract: “From sacrifice to potlatch” retraces the genesis of the “ethnographic moment” of Bataille’s thought. By rereading the testimonial of his friend Alfred Métraux, we suggest that he was not only a mediator that would introduce Georges Bataille to Marcel Mauss writings and the theory of gift, but that his research on the sacrifices and the cannibalism of the Tupinamba would have a deep influence on the ideas that Batailles developed in The Accursed Share in 1949.
