The other has no face. El reglamento by Pablo Farrés

Abstract

Pablo Farrés’ novels reflect on the violence that constitutes the human nature. In his third novel, El reglamento [The regulations] (2013), the reflection takes place in the extra-human origins that constitute the law. However, the prehistory of man survives in the civilized human, consequently the interrogation about the bloody origins of civilization always involves the biographical origin of the individual. In this novel, the regulation implies not only political laws, but also the language code and the rules that make reality a coherent whole. What threatens the individual with physical and sexual violence, schizophrenia and aphasia is, at the same time, the extra-human ground of Homo Sapiens. In El reglamento [The regulations], Argentine history, but also West history, is an atrocious fable about authoritarianism, fascism and obedience in terms of sexual submission and low excremental materialism.