The appropriation of pop culture in popular movements of struggle and the emergence of a revolutionary aesthetics

Abstract

Faced with an aesthetic paradigm that aligns with and perpetuates the hegemonic social order, based on economic, social, and political exploitation, we argue for the need to construct a new revolutionary aesthetic. In contemporary movements of popular struggle, we observe representations and graphic creations that suggest the first steps toward this new aesthetic are already underway. The aim is to determine whether the appropriation of pop culture in the graphic expressions of contemporary popular movements of struggle represents the initial steps toward a new aesthetic relationship of a revolutionary nature. The research design is qualitative, inductive, and based on case studies. The cases of Chile, Colombia, Nepal, and the Faculty of Engineering of UNAM, Mexico, were analyzed. The findings indicate that contemporary movements of popular struggle exhibit characteristics that point to the emergence of a revolutionary aesthetic project.