Mao and "Obamao": Aesthetics and Politics in the Cultural Revolution and its Aftermath

This thesis examines the intersections of aesthetics and politics during and after the Cultural Revolution, in propagandistic posters and their re-appropriated forms today. Using Ban's discourse of "desublimation", I untangle the meanings that manipulations to Maoist and Cultural Revolution propaganda, in forms of commodities such as the "Obamao" wallet, illuminate about China's complex relationship with its past.