LOS SIETE LOCOS AND THE SENSE OF EVIL IN RESIDUAL SUBJECTS: LITERATURE THAT TAKES OVER AN (UN)ENCHANTED TERRITORY

Abstract

We present a study of the novel Los siete locos (1929) by Roberto Arlt in relation to the problem of evil and the disenchantment of residual subjects at the beginning of the twentieth century. The purpose is to understand general and specific principles of a physical and literary territory whose disenchantment, pierced by the complexity of evil, it overcomes the weariness of scientistic utopias that privileged destruction and death over life. In modern Argentina evil is not in the "other", personified by indigenous people, blacks and gauchos. Evil arrogates to itself a banal, virulent and contagious form that grows at the heart of the system itself, as enunciated by Baudrillard (2011), evident in this narrative when examining the thinking and actions of Arlt's madmen, modern people who in a complicit duplicity are extremely cruel (Neiman, 2012).