This book treats Joseph Conrad's simultaneous interests in exchange,
contracts, and the condition of displacement. The central hypothesis is
that the novelist's characters face the option of signing or rejecting
what might, with some generalization, be called a social covenant. These
individuals conduct a lonely or marginal existence and, to ease their
isolation, they would like to (re)enter a community. For this reason,
they are ready to contribute to larger collective causes and comply with
those restrictions that social life, in its contractual aspect,
requires. As Julia Kristeva puts it, "The foreigner is the one who
works," yet engagement in transactions in order to earn a social
position is fraught with difficulties. In return for their contribution,
these hard-working characters do not always receive the compensation
that they had in mind, especially when their definition of companionship
violates the boundaries of legality and social propriety. Their private,
illicit interests are bound to clash with communal ones, and the ensuing
negotiating, readjustment, or compromise-seeking either crush the
individual party or result in a redefinition of the notion of contract.
This link between exchange and displacement is explored in nine
narratives. Just as the concept of exile is used in a broad, often
metaphorical sense (ranging from characters who are actual migrants
through individuals who occupy a marginal position within their native
community to individuals who are caught between conflicting
cultural-economic models), the trade or contractual alliance that can
create, or at least promise, a sense of communal belonging and personal
recognition is also manifold in its definition. Although it always
includes, if to varying degrees, the transference of economic goods or
entering a specific agreement, exchange is never limited to
legal-material procedures.
