Politics & Aesthetics in Kazakhstan

Politics & Aesthetics in Kazakhstan examines the way in which design conveys power and ideology into a populace on a national level and individual level. This paper explores the mechanics of how metaphysical concepts such as identity and societal kinship become imbued into material form via aesthetics. This exploration is completed through frameworks and approaches rooted in Critical Theory involving such thinkers as Foucault, Adorno, and Marcuse. The framework developed is then applied to a history of Astana (now called Nur-Sultan), the capital of the modern Kazakh state.

This paper develops the concept of aesthetics as the meeting place of the material and immaterial and as a critical lens for understanding the role of design in anthropology, political science, and other disciplines. Through in-depth research on the architectural history of Astana combined with Kazakh government statements of policy a thread between the immaterial ideas of power, statehood and citizenship are drawn into the aesthetic layer of the capital.

The paper then shifts to bridge the above to individual level aesthetic experience. By doing so, we come to see how ideas of state, power, and control become effectively imbued into the psyche of the populace.

The paper concludes that a feedback loop is created whereby the aesthetic environment becomes the invisible enforcer of cultural ideology in a given place, which in turn a populace will continue to recreate. This understanding of the cycle of culture is a powerful tool to breaking down the effects of design in our modern world.