The Peasant Imagination

Peasant cultures in Spain were progressively dismantled as capitalism expanded in rural areas, in a sort of "internal colonization ", an epistemicide of peasant ways of sense-making. In our seminar we try to recover some of this "peasant imagination" through three lines: magic (traditions of ecstasy and ritual), narrative forms (especially the folk tale) and community organization structures. We also approach the concept of "peasant imagination" in another way, namely, referring to the contemporary desire of re-inventing the peasant world that is proliferating in Iberia and beyond.