From the 1960s, anthropologists of different national traditions came to share the view that Marcel Mauss’s text, "Essay on the Gift," contained a theory of exchange which takes the identification between the thing given and the spirit of the donor as the explanatory principle of transactions. This interpretation contrasts with that held by Mauss’s contemporaries, who lifted from the work aspects relating to law, obligations and total prestations. Starting from this fact, the article problematizes the essay’s fate and seeks to make it intelligible. To this end, it examines the socio-intellectual conditions which contributed to producing this inflection in the readings of the work and the consolidation of a kind of collective belief concerning it. Through this case study, the author identifies mechanisms which operate in the process of constructing theories, in the conformity found in representations of certain texts, and in the consecration of these works in the area of anthropology.