Aesthetic formation and the image of modern China: The philosophical aesthetics of Cai Yi

In this dissertation I examine the problem of China's modern formation as a national subject. I begin with a discussion of the various discourses in the West concerning the problem of China's relation to history and the category of the human. Cai Yi, a major figure in 20th century Chinese aesthetics attempts to link the problem of art organically to a philosophical reading of the dialectical generation of knowledge. His formulation of a theory of thinking in images and the production of artistic types is grounded in dialectical materialism and provides the means to produce a modern subject. The link between this subjectivity and aesthetics provides the means to transform China into an historical subject.