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Reproducibility, Propaganda and the Chinese Origins of Neoliberal Aesthetics

Postmodernism is normally framed as a Western movement, with theoretical and philosophical roots in Europe. Scott’s essay links artistic postmodernism to the influence of Maoism in the West, specifically through the dissemination and absorption of the content and form of Maoist propaganda. Taking into consideration the broad significance of Mao and China for art and culture in the West in the second half of the twentieth-century, the essay comes to terms with the material effects of a global propaganda movement, and the remains of a personality cult, that currently transcends the traditional political categories of the Left and the Right.