ABSTRACT
One crucial question in the discussion of aesthetic discourse in Indonesian context is its construction of being under hegemony of Western aesthetic character. This can be easily verified, not to mention, in various aesthetic books. This phenomenon leads to the destruction of a particular authentic entity of Indonesian aesthetics, as one of the strategic capitals of arts and cultural development. For this reason, this particular study focuses on: describing the construction of Western character hegemony found in aesthetic books in Indonesia; and identifying various factors leading to that. The hermeneutic approach was used to explain that phenomenon. The analysis of data revealed the following results. First, the construction of Western character hegemony is mainly in terms of ‘substance’ and ‘person’. In relation to the substance, this is easily seen from the content materials of the books that show Western character bias. Meanwhile, in terms of the ‘person’, writers tend to present Western philosophers that are considered as those who construct the theories of art philosophy. Second, the main factor underlying the Western bias is the strong hegemony of orientalism construction in the knowledge system of most Indonesians, not to mention in art performance today.
