When the word 'visceral' is used, it is used as a qualifying adjective to indicate that a thing, an attitude or a way of expressing oneself is very intimate, very passionate or very intense. Everything that is considered visceral will be something very felt, full of sensations (both positive and negative), in a certain sense related more to the impulsive and instinctive than to the rational that a person can achieve in certain situations.
As the word says, when we use the term visceral we are referring to a way of expressing ourselves that comes from within us, that is, it comes from our viscera (those organs located right in the middle of the body such as the guts, intestines ). The idea that there is something that arises deep within us and that is brought out then gives the feeling that it is something natural, not rationalized, that appears through impulse and that does not always measure the consequences that it can generate.
Obviously, social and behavioral patterns often mean that human beings do not truly act according to their feelings. Both voluntary and involuntary repression of these sensations, feelings, and thoughts is what makes it possible for all of us to live together. However, certain situations that can generate violence, conflict, anguish, fear or even joy in abundant quantities are precisely those that make us have a visceral attitude or response, without measuring the way we express it or, perhaps doing it precisely to cause a certain type of reaction in those who witness our act.
In this sense, art has in many respects a greater relationship with visceral forms since it is always a more heartfelt and less rational way of expressing that human beings have. Thus, artists are sometimes seen as carefree people, not repressed by social guidelines and who let out of their being all those feelings and sensations that are born in their guts and that they cannot shut up.
