Animalness and Physiology in the Peasant Aesthetics of the Mexican Revolution

This article examines the literary, photographic and musical representations of the peasant in the Mexican Revolution (1910 -1917). It aims to analyze the animalness figures in the peasant representations. It also seeks to question the literary physiolo-gy as an aesthetic labor in some artistic expressions of the Mexican Revolution. The methodology is a critical-hermeneutic approach to literary texts, popular songs and pictures from that time in order to articulate a relationship between text, context and aesthetic representation. It is primarily a methodology of literary criticism tailored to visual and sound objects. To do so, the first section features the core elements of the animal representation of the peasant during the 19th century. The second section provides an analysis of how the popular culture shaped the representations of the peasant as an animal. The results suggest that a way to attain better epistemologi-cal outcomes when analyzing aesthetically the peasant people is to study the tropo-logy of the animalness. In conclusion, this work examines the animal representation of the peasant as an aesthetic process in the construction of the nation as well as the process of the Mexican national identity.