Nationalizing aesthetics
Subtitle: art education in Egypt and Japan, 1872-1950
By: by Raja Adal
Published: 2009
Language: eng
Number of pages: 247
Description: This dissertation asks why art education was introduced in modern schools. Whether in the Western world, in Japan, or in Egypt, drawing education began as a functional skill. It aimed at preparing children for such tasks as map making, manufacturing design, or scientific imaging. This purpose fit the paradigm of modernity as a process of industrialization, rationalization, and ordering of society. Yet at particular moments in the evolution of each society--in 1918 in Japan and 1947 in Egypt--drawing education became an aesthetic art aimed at subjective self expression and beauty. This work asks why this transformation from a skill to an art. Drawing was not alone in introducing aesthetics into primary schools. A chapter on music education illustrates how bureaucrats and educators saw music as the most rapid and powerful means of reaching children's hearts. Modern education was no longer simply about teaching children industrial skills or disciplining their bodies. It sought to shape their hearts and define the objects of their desire. In government schools the central object of that desire was to be the nation, as expressed in national pasts, national landscapes, national anthems, and national languages. My work proposes that with the introduction of art education, modernity underwent an aesthetic turn.

Why compare Japan and Egypt? This work concludes that although geographically distant and culturally dissimilar, Egyptian and Japanese bureaucrats and educators shared a common calculus. Their writings and policies were shaped not by the particularities of culture but by the logic of their position vis-à-vis the modern West. In both societies, the introduction of aesthetic education served to foster national cohesion by controlling children's desires. Cultural transformation, however, was not independent from economic conditions, and art education entered Japanese schools some three to six decades before Egypt. The difference between both societies is apparent in a chapter on calligraphy education. While wartime Japanese bureaucrats and educators introduced calligraphy education to foster national cohesion, their Egyptian counterparts were too occupied with insuring the survival of the Arabic script to advocate its beautification. There were limits to the role of aesthetics in modern nationalism.
Notes: "August 2009."

Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of History)--Harvard University, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references.