Fugue and Wandering in María Sonia Cristoff’s Mal de época

Abstract

The article analyzes the representation of wandering in relation to the experience of fugue in the novel Mal de época, by the Argentine writer María Sonia Cristoff, as a way of questioning the politics of everyday modern and postmodern mobility. Throughout an investigation on Albert Dadas –diagnosed with dissociative fugue– and the story of a character involved in an attack, wandering defines the fugues of the characters, on the one hand, as a break with the conditions of control and power of their own contexts; and, on the other, as an atmosphere of dislocation and dissolution of identities that, through waiting and boredom, embody the mood of a crisis and a deterritorializing experience.