Dispossessed and Wicked. A Rereading of “El Cobrador” by Rubem Fonseca

Abstract

The article analyzes “El cobrador”, by Rubem Fonseca. It is intended to show that this story evidences the materiality of the discomfort of subordinate groups, in the face of the exclusion they experience from power groups in Brazil. What is interesting about this text does not simply lie in the claim and the search for equality, but in elaborating an ethic that is based on revenge and robbery, supported by an unfulfilled promise: the equitable distribution of goods (material and symbolic). Likewise, we want to prove that this story denounces as false the image of a Brazil in social harmony and presents, on the contrary, a country biased by violence, in which the marginalized are no longer willing to continue to endure social inequalities. On the other hand, it is also argued that this text shows the emergence of an excluded subject, but understood as an excess typical of late capitalism, a perverse and violent subject, a product of the demands to which contemporary society invites and, at the same time, demands to be an integral part.