The dialectics of marginality: “Malagueta, Perus e Bacanaço”

Abstract

The underworld of marginalized people constitutes a privileged material in the short stories by João Antônio, whose characters represent individuals that live on the margins of the economic process, excluded from a consumerist society, deprived of rights and guarantees inherent in the ordinary citizen., thus surviving by resorting to games, theft, prostitution, drug-dealing and other illegal artifices that characterize the practice of trickery. It results in means of survival such as games, thefts, prostitutions, traffic and other illegal procedures that characterize swindling. This paper analyses the short story “Malagueta, Perus a Bacanaço”, and discusses the modes of configuration of situations of trickery, in an attempt to understand it as a survival strategy adopted by marginalized individuals.