Going To The Aesthetics Of Life In The City

The study of life aesthetics bursts forth great strength of potential in recent years. Aesthetics in both east and west countries projects their interest into a broad field to achieve the “life turn” of in this area. Life aesthetics origins from the west with deep resources and from our country with tradition, therefore it provides the background both in history and reality for its expansion.Even though the study of life aesthetics predicts a broaden theoretical foreground and rich strength in utterance, it is usually doubted as nothingness or lack of pertinence to reality. This thesis confines its boundary to the city life so as to construct a true geomorphology belonging to the city life. The city aesthetics emphasizes mainly on the life attitude and spiritual temperament of citizens. The aesthetics of city life should concern more about the modern life style, life attitude and spiritual status rather than about the institution and utensils. After all, things on the level of material like institution and utensils, as Simmel alludes them to objective culture, are created or dominated by human being.The guideline of this thesis combines the theoretical construction of life aesthetics and practice, focuses on the life experience in city, especially on the real existence experience of modern city people. It observes concretely the interactive in the field of city and space, city and body, city and modernity and so on. Based on this, the guideline and content of the thesis develops as follows:Chapter one analyzes the basic theory of life aesthetics, like the western theory of “living world” by Husserl, “life style” by Ludwig Wittgenstein, “real life” by Marx the aesthetics, and the native resources like Confucius and Taoism. Such are the premise of the validity of studying life aesthetics.Chapter two chooses various cultural elements from literature and film, probes diachronically the space construction in the context of city, ranging from new cultural movement and Yan'an Literary Movement. The centre of literature transferred from city to countryside, when it intensifies the pace of intellectual reform in thought. After 1949, the centre of literary moves back to city, in which the new government confronted with challenge of city reform and how to transform the multiple city space into a ideology with uniform and irreproachability. Part two exemplifies the Spy Film after the founding of PRC, which reflects the city space with highlighted ideology. Part three analyzes the chronological change of life space in city at different stage and points out the contest between female and the space of everyday life. It believes that the female uses needle work as a main instrument to rebel everyday life and self-narration. This part aims to present the complicated faces of various forces discipline in city space, with the process of liberation, discipline and liberation again.Chapter three focuses mainly on the body production in the context of city. The first part analyzes the female body aesthetics through space, gender and body. The practice of body utterance challenged the moral life in modern China under the influence of mass media, and shadowed the path of female liberation. Part two takes a case study from Spring Festival Party in the year of Horse to study the body spectacle, outlines the complex development of Chinese society, politics, economy and culture reflected from TV. This chapter denotes that the body spectacle flood in city life provides a complex text and an important resource in mass criticism. The control and indulgence of body clearly presents the path of ideology operation.Chapter four discusses the mutual evaluation between city and modernity from the perspective of Visualism. Part one elaborates the modernity of everyday life in city by using the core conception of velocity and distance from Simmel; part two observes city from the street and tramp; part three analyzes the nostalgia in modern city life and refers to historical circumstance unavoidable in modern and postmodern context; part four takes the works by New Sensation School, Zhang Ailing and Shen Congwen to explain the relationship between city and literature in order to display the various literary form of city life experience and the complex interactivity of transcendent and reality. The literary works unfolds the cultural identity constructed from city ideology, city participation and mass construction. City is the main constructor of modern city identity and a necessary component city imagination.In conclusion, this thesis outlines the city life aesthetics through detail description and city cultural geomorphology with rich life experience. Although the classic theory of aesthetics focuses on eternal discussion of the ontology and epistemology, it doesn't mean the pursuits of ontology is the only valid theory. In reality, the task of aesthetics should construct both theory and experience, i.e. the concern of ontology should not forget its life practice and contemporary culture, and take an awful and leisurely attitude to lead to anew the aesthetics. City life aesthetics is an unfinished project, which acquires our incessant concern and effort.